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🇦🇷 Argentina /Elections & Politics

Political Reform Remains Stalled in Argentina’s Senate as PASO Abolition Lacks Votes

From La Nación · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Analysis Named sources Ongoing story
  • President Javier Milei’s political reform proposal remains stalled in the Senate because the government lacks votes to abolish or suspend the PASO primaries.
  • Opposition lawmakers from the UCR, Pro and Peronist-aligned groups view the primaries as a way to manage internal party conflicts and prevent breakups.
  • Officialist Senate leader Patricia Bullrich said committee debate would resume on Sept. 15, beginning with broader issues before the government seeks agreement on the primaries.

Argentina’s political reform has yet to get moving in the Senate. The government of Javier Milei sent the bill to the chamber in April as its top priority, but it has since remained largely dormant.

As far as I know, there is no news, everything remains the same. We do not have the votes.

· Unnamed Peronist senatorThe senator described the lack of support for the government’s political reform in comments to La Nación.

The central obstacle is the government’s push to eliminate the open, simultaneous and compulsory primaries, known as PASO. Opposition blocs that cooperate with the government, along with Kirchnerist lawmakers, have refused to grant La Libertad Avanza its main, and perhaps only, objective in the bill. They consider the primaries essential for managing the fierce internal disputes within their parties and avoiding splits.

The stalled debate returned briefly to the political conversation when senators discussed proposals for “clean records,” which would bar people with judicial convictions from running for office. Patricia Bullrich, leader of the government’s Senate bloc, said the political reform debate would resume in two weeks. The Constitutional Affairs Committee later formally scheduled the meeting for Sept. 15.

Crickets.

· Unnamed Radical senatorThe senator used the expression to emphasize that the reform debate had made no progress.

Bullrich acknowledged that nothing had changed since committee discussions were abandoned in May. The government still lacks the votes either to permanently repeal the PASO system or suspend it for the process leading to next year’s presidential elections. “There is no consensus, we are building it, but we still do not have it,” she told La Nación.

The debate will begin on Sept. 15.

· Patricia BullrichArgentina’s officialist Senate leader announced when the committee would resume discussion.

She said the government would begin at a moderate pace, inviting specialists and discussing changes to the political parties law, digital membership registrations and campaign financing. A Peronist opposition senator told the newspaper, “As far as I know, there is no news, everything remains the same. We do not have the votes.” A Radical senator offered a similar assessment with the phrase “crickets,” underscoring the lack of progress.

There is no consensus, we are building it, but we still do not have it.

· Patricia BullrichBullrich acknowledged that the government still lacked the votes to abolish or suspend the PASO primaries.
About this summary

Originally published by La Nación in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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