Buenos Aires, January 2 (NA) – The General Confederation of Labor (CGT) expressed its “absolute opposition and rejection” of the Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU) that modifies the intelligence law and stressed that such reforms must “be dealt with and legitimized through the National Congress.” “It introduces changes in the organization and management of the system of National Intelligence Law No. 25,520, enabling arbitrary, regressive, and dangerous reforms by decree that must necessarily be dealt with and legitimized through the National Congress,” lamented the labor central in a statement accessed by the Argentine News Agency. The CGT disseminated its contrary stance on this initiative at a time of tension with the libertarian administration over the project it is promoting in Congress for labor reform, which is rejected by unionists. The new text from the unionists considered that “this government decision leaves all citizens in an institutionally critical situation: the State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE) will increase its opacity and its power without parliamentary control.” “All its espionage activities will become ‘covered up’, transforming intelligence agents into ‘secret police’ or ‘parapolice forces’, and enabling the detention of people without a judicial order,” the CGT evaluated. “In turn, it authorizes the Armed Forces and security forces to carry out internal intelligence tasks. It also empowers the execution of tasks in the event of a ‘leak of classified information’, which in practice represents harassment and censorship over the exercise of free journalism, among other serious risks,” it continued. In this regard, the central insisted that “this thus configures a serious threat to individual freedoms and the rights guaranteed by the Argentine Constitution.” And it closed: “These initiatives, divorced from the genuine priorities of our people, arise as the indispensable repressive complement of a continuous economic and social adjustment program that is being carried out and that will not be sustainable over time, and that, therefore, moves further and further away from a model compatible with the full validity of a democracy.”
