“Camau” Espínola, Alejandra Vigo, Guillermo Snopek, María Eugenia Catalfamo, Edgardo Kueider (from left to right), the dissident PJ block/Twitter
A rebellion broke out yesterday in the ruling bloc of the Senate. Four Peronist legislators decided to leave the bench of the Frente de Todos and join the dissident Justicialista Alejandra Vigo (Córdoba) in a new block that will be called Federal Unity. In political terms, it is a very hard blow for Vice President Cristina Kirchner: thus she loses total control of the Upper House, which she had been managing with an iron fist since December 2019.
What does this mean? Greater difficulties for the vice when it comes to gathering the necessary quorum to meet, which is 37 legislators present. Translated: more dependence on conjunctural alliances with opposition forces.
It is that, with the loss of those four senators, the interblock of the Frente de Todos will have 31 members. There is worse news for CFK: Kirchnerism would be losing its status as the first minority, which would thus become Juntos por el Cambio, with 33 souls of its own.
Cristina was not in CABA yesterday. She decided to spend the long weekend in Santa Cruz, her place in the world. The fracture (a sign of the wear and tear of his authority?) Comes at a key moment: today the preparatory session is scheduled to elect the new authorities of the Senate for the next period of ordinary sessions, which will formally begin on March 1 with the President Alberto Fernández’s speech before the Legislative Assembly.
The vice, their official spokesmen said yesterday, will not be part of the game in today’s session. She will be replaced by the provisional president of the Senate, Claudia Ledesma Abdala from Santiago. It is assumed that the new block with a Peronist profile emerges with the intention of influencing the chamber. Will that be reflected when discussing the new cadre of authorities? It is obvious that he will seek to raise the price of this nascent bank of five members. The new reality adds some spice to a session that is usually routine.
Senator Alejandra Vigo from Córdoba is the wife of the governor of that province, Juan Schiaretti, who has been working for a long time in a national army with a Peronist profile but clearly differentiated from Kirchnerism. She is not so surprised that she is the spearhead of the rebellion.
She is now joined by three senators who have marked some previous discontent with Cristina’s way of conducting: Edgardo Kueider from Entre Ríos, Carlos “Camau” Espínola from Corrientes and Guillermo Snopek from Jujuy, brother-in-law of the governor and head of radicalism Gerardo Morales ( see separately).
Perhaps the biggest surprise was that the San Luis Eugenia Catalfamo folded, who does not take a step without the consent of her political boss, the governor of San Luis, Alberto Rodríguez Saá.
“We seek to be an alternative from where the possibility of contributing to the reflection on the Argentina that we want for ourselves and future generations is prioritized, without cracks, with discussions that propose solutions in the short, medium and long term,” said this new group in a statement in which they confirmed the news of the breakup.
Espínola and Kueider (an Albertist until recently, now a critic of the government) were part of the Frente Nacional y Popular bloc, with 21 members until yesterday, led by Jose Mayans from Formosa. Snopek was part of the 14-member Unidad Ciudadana bench, led by Juliana Di Tullio, from Buenos Aires. Together they are interblock K.
They separated like this, into two groups, when Cristina devised a trick to keep one more seat in the Judicial Council, the body that selects and evaluates judges. Something that she still has not achieved due to the opposition -with legal arguments- of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation.
Governor Rodríguez Saá surprised by showing himself with his colleague Schiaretti weeks ago, after the Cordovan launched that third political space, supposedly above the FdT-JxC crack, with Juan Manuel Urtubey from Salta. In addition, he is in conflict with his brother Adolfo de él, a national senator close to Cristina.
The new legislative group vindicates federalism and blames Alberto, as head of the Executive Power, as well as Cristina, in her role as leader of the Legislature, for their lack of adherence to that creed.
The truth is that the ruling party will have even more difficulties to achieve, with allies, the quorum of 37 seats necessary to enable a session at the level of the Upper House.
Kirchnerism would be losing its status as the first minority, in the hands of JxC
