Alberto Fernandez, the president of Argentina, declared on Monday that his country would follow a recent Supreme Court decision and allocate a higher percentage of public funding to the opposition-controlled city of Buenos Aires.
The news represented a turnabout from Fernandez’s previous week’s controversial statement that he was rejecting a court decision that enhanced financing to the capital.
Fernandez clarified on Twitter that the money will be paid in bonds denominated in pesos and added that judicial decisions are binding even when they are perceived to be unfair and detrimental.
The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the capital city should resume getting the 2.95% of federal subsidies that it had been receiving until the national government reduced the ratio to 1.4% in 2020.
The city, which is the wealthiest and most populated in the nation, is run by a conservative mayor, and it has been asking for a sizable portion of the monies that Argentina law mandates be divided across the nation’s regions.
Invoking the “incongruous and impossible-to-enforce” verdict as politically driven in advance of general elections next year and claiming it would harm the other provinces, Fernandez declared on Thursday that he would disregard it, causing a legal dilemma.
