The former Minister of Defense considers that “it would violate the rights of those who want to vote for a list, and they tell them that the list they want to vote for is made up in this way.”
The former minister of Defending and current senator, Javier García, questioned his vote for gender parity law in the political system of Uruguay since “no right is worth more than another.” The project will be voted on April 5, in the Senate Human Rights, Equity and Gender Commission.
The parity law has been facing different resistances in the Parliament, since the project was presented by the senator of the National Party, Gloria Rodríguez, in 2021. Now, and after long negotiations, the initiative will be voted on next Tuesday in committee, despite the fact that the original intentions were to be able to have the law approved in March.
In the midst of the internal conversations in the nationalist caucus to obtain the support of the senators—the Wide Front has already confirmed his votes, as Rodríguez announced in dialogue with Scope—, Javier García He maintained that he still has to study the issue, since he recently rejoined the Senate; but that, “in principle”, he does not agree with the spirit of the law.
“A law has to protect rights of all, there cannot be laws that protect some rights and violate other rights,” said the former minister, in relation to the gender parity raised by Rodríguez’s initiative. “No right is worth more than another. So we are going to study it from that perspective,” said García.
In that sense, the white senator considered that the modifications proposed by the project in question — which proposes the inclusion of an equal number of men and women on the lists and in the Executive Branch — “would violate the rights of those who want to vote for a list, and They tell you that the list you want to vote for is made up this way, I determine it and not you.”
“I shared the Quota Law, which allows that for every three candidates, two have to be of one gender and one of another. But it seems to me that the invasion of citizens’ rights by the law leads to people regretting it later. The democracy “It is that the person chooses and not that they choose for me,” said the former leader at a press conference.
An early response to García’s argument
Although the former Minister of Defense’s statements were made on Friday, Senator Rodríguez had already anticipated the argument put forward by García as one of the nonsense heard during the treatment of the parity bill in commission.
In that sense, the promoter of the initiative maintained that “it has also been used to say that it is forcing the electorate to vote for women”. “It is not true, it is not a valid argument because, furthermore, the law is not for women and it will be applied in the same way if the underrepresented sex is men. They are not removed either freedoms, because voting is mandatory and the lists that are chosen are already made with the names that others chose, he noted.
In this regard, he made reference to the fact that the lists that are voted on in both the internal and general elections are already predetermined at the moment the voter enters the dark room; and that, although in the internal elections you have a greater variety of options and the possibility of choosing who you want to be the candidate to represent you in October, the truth is that, in the end, you always choose between “packages” of candidates already prepared by each game.
Source: Ambito
