Political Crisis in Argentine Congress Over Senator Villaverde

By retracting her resignation, the lawmaker ensures she maintains her current seat in the Lower House until her situation in the Senate is definitively resolved, avoiding being left without parliamentary immunity and without representation. For LLA, Villaverde's seat is crucial. The strategy being pushed by the Government is for the challenge to be debated and result in the first sessions of the chamber, which would take place in the upcoming extraordinary period. Villaverde's withdrawal of her resignation to the Lower House, which had been submitted days earlier with the expectation of an immediate swearing-in in the Senate, serves as a strategy of coverage and protection. The decision to remove her credentials from the vote and send them to a committee was pushed by the former head of the LLA bloc, Ezequiel Atauche, a parliamentary chess move to prevent the opposition from having the possibility of advancing with a direct expulsion motion in the chamber. The controversy surrounding Villaverde, a key figure in the libertarian organization in Río Negro, is focused on the serious challenges presented by Peronism and other opposition blocs, which point to her alleged ties to drug trafficking. In this context of legislative fragility, the political defense of the lawmaker, despite the shadows hanging over her past and her connections, becomes a priority for the ruling coalition. Buenos Aires, December 2, 2025 - Total News Agency-TNA - The swearing-in of the Río Negro legislator Lorena Villaverde as a national senator for La Libertad Avanza (LLA) has triggered an institutional and political crisis in the National Congress, forcing an unprecedented last-minute maneuver: the elected deputy formally withdrew her resignation to the Lower House. This judicial precedent, added to family ties with Machado's circle, has put the legislator's nomination in a situation of 'extreme complexity,' as sources from the Upper House acknowledged to this agency. The return of her nomination to the Constitutional Affairs committee, a body that still needs to be formed after the legislative renewal, generates a waiting period that the ruling bloc seeks to take advantage of. Villaverde's resignation, which was already on the agenda for the Wednesday session of Deputies, was reversed due to the complicated situation of her nomination in the Senate, which was set aside and returned to the Constitutional Affairs Committee for review. The drama intensified last Friday, when the legislator, who had won a seat in the Upper House in the last national election, had to leave the chamber while her bloc colleagues and the other senators were taking their oath. In the Casa Rosada, they maintain the political defense of the Río Negro deputy, ratifying her seat. According to opposition complaints, Villaverde would have met Machado through her partner, Claudio Ciccarelli, a first cousin of Mármol. To these accusations of proximity to criminal structures was added the reactivation of a 2002 criminal case, when Villaverde was found in possession of cocaine in Miami, United States. The libertarian bloc in the Senate has a limited number of its own legislators, and losing a seat would significantly complicate its negotiation capacity and the approval of fundamental laws, such as the structural reforms package and the Bases Law, which the Executive Branch intends to promote in extraordinary sessions. 'I understand that she is staying,' an authoritative voice from La Libertad Avanza suggested, implying that the caucus is not willing to give up its seat. The epicenter of the accusations is her relationship with Fred Machado (whose real name is Fredy Mármol), the Argentine businessman extradited to the United States to lead a vast international network of cocaine trafficking, money laundering, and multimillion-dollar frauds. The formation of the Constitutional Affairs Committee and its first opinion will mark the pulse of this unprecedented tension in Parliament.