The PRO bloc is going through an intense internal discussion about party discipline, after the frustrated vote on the article that promoted the elimination of pensions for former leaders in the project that modifies the formula for pension benefits.
The former radical Silvana Giúdici, who is part of the bench led by Cristian Ritondo, applied a strong reprimand against her peers Daiana Fernández Molero and Germana Figueroa Casas, who were absent when speaking on the issue.
Macri sources told LPO that Giudici’s sermon had no effect. “They challenged each other and did not vote,” they said.
The anger of those who criticized this attitude is based on the fact that Peronism and Pichettism got 111 legislators to reject the article, while libertarians, macristas and radicals only gathered 109 votes in favor of the affirmative. They lost the bet by two votes and calculate that Martín Menem would have had to break the tie if Fernández Morlero and Figueroa Casas, two legislators prone to distraction and lack of political commitment, had assumed the bloc’s position.
In fact, both deputies changed their vote from negative to positive when the tobacco chapter in the omnibus law was discussed, the most conflictive section of the discussion on April 30. At that moment, the numbers gave a tie between affirmatives, rejections and abstentions despite the fact that the Riojan rushed to read the result before the parliamentary secretariat consolidated the balance and the modification of the position of the two increased the number of legislators against the tax application.
However, Giudici’s quarrel with his colleagues seems selective. Another PRO legislator told LPO that María Eugenia Vidal and Silvia Lospennato were also absent when voting to eliminate the retirement of former presidents and former vice presidents. “I don’t agree with that article either but I voted for it out of party discipline,” he said.
Article 11 established that former leaders would not receive the benefit of retirement once their term of office ended. Among the legislators who objected to it, there were those who warned that it exempted judges, diplomats and other State officials from the reduction, others alleged that it had no fiscal impact and some, expressed clearly by Miguel Ángel Pichetto, understood that an Argentine who has occupied the first magistracy should be honored with that benefit.
