President vetoes law improving funds for state universities

President Javier Milei struck down a law improving funding for state universities, just hours after huge crowds of Argentines took to the streets across the country in support of higher education, reports Buenos Aires Times.

In a decree published in the government’s Official Gazette on Thursday 3 October, Milei struck down a law passed by both chambers of congress that would increase funding for public higher education institutions and boost salaries for staff. “It is appropriate for the National Executive branch to resort to the constitutional tool of a total veto of the legislative initiative that it has been referred,” read the decree, published just after midnight. It added that the law, which aims to improve the salaries of teachers and workers, had been sent back to congress.

Several thousand Argentines joined major student-led protests nationwide on Wednesday to challenge the Milei government’s cuts to free university education. The second large-scale demonstration in six months in defence of Argentina’s cherished public university system was called over Milei’s plan to veto the law guaranteeing universities’ funding. It angered Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the budget deficit.
Full report on the Buenos Aires Times site