A group of national deputies, including both those in office and those elected on October 26, will resign from their mandates next Wednesday, ahead of the session scheduled for the swearing-in of new representatives and the election of chamber authorities. The resignations, which were communicated in writing to the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Martín Menem, will take effect during a session requested by the head of the La Libertad Avanza bloc, Gabriel Bornoroni, for 11 AM next Wednesday, December 3, according to Argentina News Agency (NA) from legislative sources. For months, it was speculated that Silvia Lospennato (PRO) would take office in the Buenos Aires Legislature after being the face of the PRO in the May elections, but the situation took a turn, and she has internally communicated in her bloc that she will remain in the Lower Chamber to complete her term. The new Minister of the Interior, Diego Santilli, communicated his resignation from his seat, which finally confirmed that his candidacy for national deputy at the head of the La Libertad Avanza (LLA) list was purely testimonial. Santilli was not aware that he would be called to join Javier Milei's Cabinet when he signed on to join the libertarian list, nor was he aware later, when the course of events pushed him to lead the list following the resignation of José Luis Espert amid a scandal over alleged narco-financing. Another atypical case is that of Itai Hagman, who is resigning from his national deputy mandate two years after taking office, but with the paradox that he will do so as a condition to begin a new four-year cycle. The leader of Patria Grande, the political party led by Juan Grabois, accepted to be the head of the list of candidates for national deputies of Fuerza Patria after the young leader Ofelia Fernández declined a previous offer from the political force. As Hagman had two full years left in his term, he has no choice but to resign in order to start a new four-year period. The rise of the Patria Grande economist was part of an agreement blessed by Cristina Kirchner to give Grabois the head of the list in the Federal Capital as a reward for not breaking with Peronism, both in the federal district and, fundamentally, in the province of Buenos Aires. NOW: the governors are forming an inter-bloc and are they adding former libertarians? For the hard Kirchnerism, this decision is a total gain because the one who will complete the last two years of Hagman's vacant term is the Camporista Javier Andrade. The Front of the Left, true to its tradition of rotating seats, had already defined that the sociologist and PTS leader Christian 'Chipi' Castillo would resign from his seat to make way for Néstor Pitrola, a leader of the Workers' Party who had already served in the Chamber of Deputies between 2015 and 2017. The rest of the deputies resigning from their mandates are representatives of LLA who ran for the Upper House and managed to get into the next composition of the Senate. The most striking case is that of deputy Lorena Villaverde, who is preparing to be sworn in this Friday as a senator amidst a flood of challenges from Peronism. The Rionegrina was challenged for her ties to Fred Machado, the businessman linked to drug trafficking and extradited to the United States who financed Espert's campaign. In addition, Villaverde had been detained in 2002 in the US state of Florida while attempting to transport a kilogram of cocaine. One of her biggest detractors is Martín Soria, the former mayor of General Roca who for two years has been hammering in the Chamber of Deputies about Villaverde's alleged ties to the drug trafficking business. Like his libertarian antagonist, Soria will also resign on Tuesday from his seat to take office in the Senate for Río Negro, after being elected. The rest of the names. The Neuquén Nadia Marquez, one of the great revelations of LLA in Deputies, will follow the same path: she will interrupt her mandate in the Lower Chamber mid-term to start a six-year period in the Senate. Both Menem and the Secretary General of the Presidency, Karina Milei, have high expectations for the role that the evangelical Neuquén can play in the Upper Chamber, to the point that they promoted her as a candidate for the provisional presidency of the Senate. The Salta libertarian María Emilia Orozco will also jump from Deputies to the Senate, having been elected in the October elections. This is a young leader from Ahora Patria, the political party of Alfredo Olmedo with whom she arrived in Deputies in 2023. Together with her companion and leader Carlos Zapata, they joined LLA and in the last elections, Orozco was given the responsibility of heading the libertarian list in Salta for the Senate. Pablo Cervi is one of the deputies who broke with the UCR bloc last year to form a bloc of 'radicals with wig', very close to the Government, that functioned as a firm ally of the ruling party. As part of his total conversion to the Forces of Heaven, they gave him a place in the libertarian list for the Senate headed by Nadia Marquez and he secured a place in the next composition of the Upper Chamber thanks to LLA's victory.
