Senate: La Libertad Avanza asks Victoria Villarruel to freeze diets

“Hereby, in my capacity as vice president of the La Libertad Avanza bloc, I am pleased to address you to formally express the decision of the undersigned, as well as that of all the members of our bloc, to express our express will “not to receive any increase in the senators’ allowances until this matter is addressed during the ordinary sessions of 2025,” expresses the note addressed to Villarruel after the controversy over the increase in allowances in the Senate that even generated strong criticism from Javier Milei.

Battle in the Senate

The vice president was politically marginalized in the Senate and excluded from cabinet meetings and official events by the Casa Rosada.

Since the conflict with the French embassy over the racist chants of the soccer team, the session to remove Edgardo Kueiderthe controversy over the kidnapping of gendarme Nahuel Gallo in Venezuela, the dispute over funds for universities and even the relationship with the governors, the menu of conflicts between the President and his running mate detonated during 2024.

And this year, with legislative elections involved, it opens a scenario of uncertainty in the Senate that must meet again in February to ratify, or modify, its authorities in addition to addressing the request to freeze diets requested by LLA and also by the UCR block.

In the crosshairs is the questioned Bartolomé Abdala, current provisional president of the Upper House in line of succession to power. “Bartolo” as he is known in San Luis, became famous not for his parliamentary work but for confessing in prime time that he used his army of advisors in the Senate to campaign for governor in his province. Explicit caste.

In the ruling party, the name of Luis Juez, current block head of the PRO and leader with his own specific weight in Córdoba, is already circulating to replace Bartolo, where La Libertad Avanza will face the intervened PRO of Mauricio Macri who aspires to close a front with Rodrigo de Loredo’s UCR to compete with the forces of heaven. The senator from Córdoba could become the new provisional president of the Senate with the direct support of Javier Milei with whom he maintains a personal bond beyond politics.

Request to Victoria Villarruel

Meanwhile, in the Upper House, signatures are accumulating to ask Villarruel to extend the resolution that established the freezing of allowances so that they are not linked to the increases received by legislative staff. The note presented by La Libertad Avanza was signed by all the members of the bench: Ezequiel Atauche (block owner), Bartolomé Abdala, Juan Carlos Pagotto, Ivana Arrascaeta and Vilma Bedia. The truth is that beyond the staging, Villarruel is not the one who decides the salaries of the senators. It is the same legislators who vote by show of hands on the system and the amount of their increases in diets.

The siege on Villarruel continued this weekend through Lilia Lemoine. “The president had not finished swearing in and she already had her own logo,” he said last night during a television interview. “I don’t believe anything, because once it’s a mistake, twice it’s a coincidence, three times it’s a pattern and here there were ten, twenty things that are unacceptable. Let him continue as vice president ringing the Senate bell and signing the decrees that the president gave him.” indicate when you are away on a work trip,” Lemoine claimed.