Deputies: with agreements for Clean Record and Single Ballot, the Government seeks to score a legislative victory

Fernando Brovelli Report.-

Treatment postponed Budgetthe Government prioritized a new agreement in Deputies that impacts the 2025 elections: the sanction of the Single Paper Ballot (BUP) and Clean File. With the exception of the expansion of the National Registry of Genetic Data, which occurred this Thursday, the The ruling party failed to pass any law from the Bases.

Pink House has been working since the winter break in July on these two electoral reform projects. The Government moved the agreement board quickly: this Thursday it made official a plenary session of commissions for this same Monday, a day on which there is usually no parliamentary activity, to speed up a session in the chamber for next Tuesday.

These agreements were drawn up in a new meeting last Monday in Casa Rosada between deputies from the PRO bloc and La Libertad Avanzaspaces that no longer need to reach consensus but rather establish priorities. As Ámbito learned, Clean Record and Single Paper Ballot were on the agenda of the meetingbut also the Penal Code reform projects with respect to the regimes of reiteration and recidivism (which reached a ruling this Wednesday). Will they also be included in the session? Another project discussed at that table was simplified divorce and the Anti-mafia lawwhich also has an office since August.

If the electoral reform projects are adhered to, the scenario is optimistic for the Government: again The closest opposition blocs would join the ruling party and Unión por la Patria would be isolated. This was expressed in the Senate vote on the Single Paper Ballot, where only Peronism voted against. As to Clean Sheetthere are nuances: radicalism and the Civic Coalition requested modifications to the proposal but accompanied the ruling with dissenting signatures. The possibility of including these suggestions will be what guarantees half a sanction for the initiative, which must be ratified in the Upper House.

Clean File and Single Paper Ballot: what the projects say

The project of Single Paper Ballot It is the one that would arrive at the session with the highest degree of consensus. What does it consist of? All the candidates competing for the same position are displayed on a single ballot, so the voter expresses his vote by marking boxes for the parties or electoral fronts for each category. (president, governor, deputy, mayor, councilor, etc.). Photos of the list holders can be seen next to the logo and name of the space for which they are competing, while the substitute candidates only appear with their names. In this way, the votes for different lists would no longer be assembled by cutting the ballot but rather by marking the different alternatives with a pencil or pen.

The initiative had delays in its approval in the Senate due to a reform requested by the Rio Negro Monica Silvawho asked that the option not be included “complete list”since it would harm provincial or neighborhood parties that do not have representation at the national level. There are discussions within the PRO and the UCR to insist on this model that enables the will of the vote to be marked in a single box; Freedom Advances agrees with both schemes, but does not want to have controversies with Silva, who represents the Governorate of Río Negro, currently close to Nation.

For its part, the proposal of Clean Sheet promoted by the PRO and the Government prevents citizens who are in any instance of judicial prosecution from running for elective positions for the eventual commission of a crime linked to corruption or embezzlement of funds. This is where the nuances appear. Some deputies of the UCR request that there be firm condemnation (that is, that they are found guilty), that they expand the list of crimes (homicide, sexual integrity, drug trafficking) and that extend the regime for officials who are designated within the Executive Branch.

For its part, Union for the Homelandwho opposed the project considering the background of lawfare that harmed leaders of their space in the past, presented a Clean Sheet project that prevents applications when all judicial instances are exhausted, which economic crimes and possessions of offshore companies are included to exclude candidates and that mechanisms are established monitoring of judicial work that can intervene in an eventual political career.

UCR, between its inmates and the tug-of-war with the Government

This week, there was a new chapter in the internal and external negotiations that the block of Deputies of the Radical Civic Union (UCR). Firstly, this Tuesday the bench met with the presence of the legislators targeted by the photo with Javier Milei in Pink House but with the absence of the sector most confrontational with the ruling party. “They want us to go discuss parliamentary strategy with the libertarian group ‘the Lilian Lemoine’,” he ironized on his social networks. Fernando Carbajal.

Pichetto Massot Cobos Banfi Deputies Dialoguists

Federal Meeting and the UCR, the blocks for which both Peronism and the ruling party are bidding.

Ignacio Petunchi

The next day, indeed A group of six radical deputies met with representatives of the libertarian bloc. The minister was also there Federico Sturzeneggerwho showed them the first drafts of the bill Leaf litter announced four months ago. “We have to work on it and analyze it; from the start, Article 1 repeals seventy laws,” radicalism told this medium. The agenda included the electoral and security reforms that the Government prioritizes but also the points of the Budget 2025 in which the ruling party is more intransigent. Casa Rosada confirmed October 8 as the start date of the debate.

“They offered us to be part of the legislative coordination table on Mondays at the Casa Rosada, but we said no because we feel that that is not our place. We are not pro-government”they let it be known from the radical bloc that they would have insisted on dealing with the union reform that the Government decided to frustrate at the last minute. The UCR also observes with resentment DNU 846/2024, which enables the free exchange of debt. You could join forces in that claim with Union for the Homeland that, as he expressed in a press conference this Wednesday, he can only highlight unity and make his position visible so that public opinion plays for his team.