Argentina, Buenos Aires — The precise radiograph of the new Chamber of Deputies shows La Libertad Avanza as the first minority, gaining significant ground compared to the outgoing cycle, closely followed by Unión por la Patria, which maintains a considerable volume. Meanwhile, the new Congress's scoreboard leaves little room for the middle-ground options, where two inter-blocks of equal size are vying for third place. La Libertad Avanza (95) The October elections left a very encouraging picture in terms of the growth of the libertarian bloc. With the result set, it embarked on a titanic race against time to strip Unión por la Patria of its status as the first minority. To do this, it went all out to fish for deputies who belonged to allied blocks, with an excellent balance. First, it annexed three 'radicals with a wig' from the Liga del Interior: Mariano Campero, Luis Picat, and Federico Tournier. Then it appealed to Patricia Bullrich to empty the PRO block, taking more than a dozen deputies (among whom Silvana Giudici, Damián Arabia, Sabrina Ajmechet, Laura Rodríguez Machado, and Alejandro Bongiovanni stand out), and in the middle it also absorbed the Santa Fean Verónica Razzini. The president of the block will continue to be Gabriel Bornoroni, while Nicolás Mayoraz and Giudici will be parliamentary secretaries. Other figures in the block are Luis Petri, Bertie Benegas Lynch, Lilia Lemoine, Karen Reichardt, Virginia Gallardo, Juliana Santillán, María Celeste Ponce, Romina Diez, Nicolás Emma, Sergio 'Tronco' Figliuolo, Diego Hartfield, Santiago Santurio, and Lorena Villaverde. Unión por la Patria The elections left a sour taste in Peronism, but despite everything, the projections allowed it to maintain the number of deputies from the concluding stage. Unity began to waver when some Peronist governors began to show signs of autonomy and threaten to break away, in order to negotiate more freely with the Government. In the end, the only one who dared to take the plunge was the Catamarqueño Raúl Jalil, who withdrew his three legislators from UP to form his own bloc. The Santiagueño Gerardo Zamora threatened to do the same but ultimately did not dare, while the Tucumán Osvaldo Jaldo ratified the continuity of the Independencia block and forced the former mayor of Tafí Viejo Javier Noguera (who had planned to join UP) to join him under political extortion. Furthermore, the puntano Jorge 'Gato' Fernández, from the PJ puntano linked to Alberto Rodríguez Saá, ignored desperate requests to be integrated into Unión por la Patria and will form a monoblock. Ultimately, the desertion of the Catamarqueños was enough for Peronism to lose its status as the first minority and face the new stage with a relative weight less than it had in the previous period. Germán Martínez was ratified as block head, and the same happened with Paula Penacca as parliamentary secretary. Other notable names in the block are Juan Grabois, Cecilia Moreau, Julia Strada, Jorge Taiana, Máximo Kirchner, Florencia Carignano, Pablo Yedlin, Eduardo Valdés, Itai Hagman, Hugo Yasky, Vanesa Siley, Agustín Rossi, Teresa García, Caren Tepp, Sergio Palazzo, Juan Marino, Santiago Cafiero, Victoria Tolosa Paz, Sebastián Galmarini, Diego Giuliano, Jimena López, Juan Carlos Molina, Sabrina Selva, Kelly Olmos, Nicolás Trotta, Aldo Leiva, Luana Volnovich, Horacio Pietragalla, and Agustina Propato. Unidos (22) The governors of Santa Fe, Maximiliano Pullaro, of Córdoba, Martín Llaryora, and of Chubut, Ignacio Torres, were in charge of exporting the brand 'Provincias Unidas' to the National Congress. The parliamentary translation was not easy and had many ups and downs, but it ended better than it started. Pullaro was the one who took the reins and imposed his vice-governor and elected national deputy Gisela Scaglia as head of the inter-bloc. This definition did not sit well with Miguel Pichetto, who thought he would retain the presidency he held in Encuentro Federal. Negotiations with the Rio Negro native and Nicolás Massot completely fell through at one point, but in the end, they were channeled and Encuentro Federal joined as its own bloc integrated into Unidos. It was also possible to incorporate the block of the Coalición Cívica, made up of Maximiliano Ferraro and Mónica Frade. The 18 deputies of Provincias Unidas (the majority bloc of Unidos) are: Gisela Scaglia (Santa Fe), Ignacio García Aresca (Córdoba), Juan Schiaretti (Córdoba), Martín Lousteau (CABA), Carlos Gutiérrez (Córdoba), Jorge Rizzotti (Jujuy), Pablo Juliano (Buenos Aires), José Nuñez (Santa Fe), Sergio Capozzi (Río Negro), Carolina Basualdo (Córdoba), Jorge Ávila (Chubut), Mariela Coletta (CABA), Pablo Farías (Santa Fe), Esteban Paulón (Santa Fe), Juan Brügge (Córdoba), María Inés Zigarán (Jujuy), Alejandra Torres (Córdoba), and Lourdes Arrieta (Mendoza), who surprised everyone by joining Unidos. PRO + UCR + MID + Others (22) The blocks of PRO and UCR, which were greatly decimated by the October elections, managed to form an inter-bloc with the MID that has reminiscences of the Cambiemos alliance and ties in number of members with the Unidos inter-bloc. Feeling betrayed by Patricia Bullrich, who took more than a dozen national deputies in recent weeks, the head of the PRO block, Cristian Ritondo, had to maneuver in a short time to form an inter-bloc with the remains of the UCR in order not to be diluted in the map of the new Chamber of Deputies. The last to cut ties with PRO had been the Santa Fean José Nuñez and the Rio Negroan Jorge Capozzi, who headed to Provincias Unidas. In the yellow bloc, with barely a dozen legislators, remained alongside the president of the Buenos Aires PRO Alejandro Finnochiaro, Florencia de Sensi, Fernando de Andreis, Antonela Giampieri, Javier Sánchez, Martín Ardohain, Emmanuel Bianchetti, Álvaro González, Daiana Fernández Molero, Aníbal Tortoriello, and Alicia Fregonese. The UCR block, a shadow of what it once was, was reduced to only six pro-government members, as the rest of the few radicals who survived the October electoral tsunami migrated to the more oppositional Provincias Unidas. The president of the UCR bloc will be Pamela Verasa, a Mendoza native who reports to Governor Alfredo Cornejo. The other members are Guillermo Agüero, Gerardo Cipolini, Diógenes González, Lisandro Nieri, and Darío Schneider. To PRO and UCR, we must add Karina Banfi, who broke with the UCR block after losing the dispute for the presidency, the aforementioned Garrido, and the two MID deputies (Oscar Zago and Claudio Falcone). Innovación Federal (7) This space, led by Salteños and Misioneros, undertook intense negotiations to incorporate other provinces of the Norte Grande, as well as the deputies of MID and Coherencia, with the objective of becoming the third force, but the negotiations fell through. In the end, it maintains the same structure with which it was operating.
