ARGENTINA’S senate dealt a blow to far-right President Javier Milei yesterday after it rejected the two Supreme Court candidates he nominated by decree earlier this year.

The congressional defeat could complicate the implementation of President Milei’s assault on the state as analysts say the president had hoped to fill the Supreme Court vacancies with appointees who would rule favourably on challenges to his economic reforms.

President Milei bypassed Congress in February to appoint two controversial Supreme Court candidates.

Opposition politicians slammed the move as an overreach of executive power.

“It’s a serious institutional conflict that the executive branch has initiated against the legislative and judicial branches,” said Senator Anabel Fernandez Sagasti from Union por la Patria party, the opposition bloc. 

Both of President Milei’s candidates — federal judge Ariel Lijo and right-wing law professor Manuel Garcia-Mansilla — had failed last year to secure the two-thirds majority required to confirm the candidates in the senate, where the president’s far-right coalition holds just seven of the 72 seats.

In a statement late on Thursday, President Milei’s office said it “repudiated” the senate vote.

But Juan Pappier, deputy director of the Americas at Human Rights Watch, said: “Today the Argentine Senate put a stop to one of the most serious attacks on judicial independence since the country’s return to democracy.”