The internal conflict within Peronism erupted when legislators from the Movimiento Derecho al Futuro abstained on a project regarding consumer over-indebtedness
In stark contrast to the statist recipes of Kirchnerism, the La Libertad Avanza bloc —aligned at the provincial level with Sebastián Pareja— demonstrated firmness by stating that they “rejected all initiatives” and opposed outright to “all projects related to over-indebtedness” to avoid distorting the free market.
The deep fracture that devours the Peronism in the province of Buenos Aires reached its peak of maximum tension in the Chamber of Deputies of the Province of Buenos Aires. In a plenary session held this Friday by the General Legislation and User and Consumer Rights committees, the ruling party attempted to mask the provincial economic crisis by addressing family delinquency, which has an alarming rate of 20.17% according to the Debt Map.
However, the day turned into an open legislative battlefield when deputies aligned with Governor Axel Kicillof rebelled against the head of the Fuerza Patria caucus, exposing the implosion of the space. The core of the conflict erupted during the vote on a project to create a regime to prevent and address consumer over-indebtedness, which imposes a mandatory pre-judicial instance before the Ombudsman led by Guido Lorenzino.
In a move that reflected the disorientation of La Cámpora, the very author of the project, Facundo Tignanelli, did not even connect virtually to the session despite also having the signature of Mayra Mendoza.
In response, deputies from the Movimiento Derecho al Futuro (MDF) Ana Luz Balor, Diego Nanni, and José Galván abstained along with Gustavo Cuervo from Nuevos Aires, objecting to the violation of Article 55 of the Provincial Constitution which limits the agency's intervention to “the acts or omissions of the Public Administration, security forces, decentralized entities or state-owned companies that imply the illegitimate, defective, irregular, abusive, arbitrary or negligent exercise of their functions”. Defending municipal powers, Ana Luz Balor severely warned that the institution “has other faculties”.
For its part, the PRO and UCR + Cambio Federal abstained arguing the lack of time to analyze the proposals, although they “expressed their support for the objectives of the regulations”.
Meanwhile, the FIT only supported one file of four projects and abstained on the rest, while Nuevos Aires approved three and abstained on the one from Facundo Tignanelli, which nonetheless achieved a majority opinion due to the rescue of the massista deputy Rubén Eslaiman.
For the ordinary session next Tuesday September 29, the plenary also gathered three unified files promoted by legislators Ana Luz Balor, Noelia Saavedra, Ariel Archanco, Juan Malpeli, Silvina Vacarezza, and Leonardo Moreno. These initiatives address the repression of harassment in collections, the “dignified treatment of over-indebted individuals” with financial education, and mechanisms to “strengthen the protection of over-indebted consumers”.
