'Ficha Limpia' fallout: Recriminations fly, Milei points at Macri

Recriminations continue to fly in the wake of last week’s collapse ‘Ficha Limpia’ bill in the Senate, with officials from Misiones Province, President Javier Milei and former president Mauricio Macri caught in a confusing war of words.

The anti-corruption bill, which sought to bar individuals with second-instance corruption convictions from running for office, fell one vote short of the required majority in the Senate. 

Its rejection was unexpected, particularly as two senators from Misiones – previously seen as sympathetic to Milei’s cause and thought to support the measure – voted against, prompting speculation about last-minute political manoeuvring.

If it had passed, the bill would’ve banned former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner – the Peronist leader seen as the main opposition leader to Milei – from running from office, given her corruption conviction, which is yet to be confirmed by the Supreme Court.

Misiones Province Economy Minister Adolfo Safrán claimed Monday via X that the rejection by Senators Sonia Rojas Decut and Carlos Arce was intended to benefit the Milei’s administration and derail an alleged political operation by Mauricio Macri to take Cristina Fernández de Kirchner out of the electoral race and thus improve the position of his candidate for the City of Buenos Aires Legislature, Silvia Lospennato.

Safrán, a key figure in the Frente Renovador de la Concordia led by ex-governor and local strongman Carlos Rovira, was the first official to publicly justify the senators’ votes, which helped sink the bill on May 8.

He defended their decision as a gesture of “political independence” from “national party structures” and criticised Macri’s record on the issue, "in [PRO’s] 17 years in power in the City of Buenos Aires they never pushed similar legislation."

Safrán aimed his fire directly against Mauricio Macri, whom he accused of fomenting Ficha Limpia with the objective of favouring Lospennato.

In a lengthy thread, he argued that Rovira’s intervention had “disarmed with a simple movement a Macri ploy” to dominate the national agenda and deepen the grieta rift between Kirchnerism.

The Misiones Renewal Party, he added, had rejected a bill “tailor-made the interests of the City leadership” and had signalled an alternative “political path” in the face of collapsing party identities and “heavy fragmentation.”

“In the upcoming elections, with Mauricio Macri and Cristina [Fernández de] Kirchner both qualified to compete, it will be society itself with its vote – not the Judiciary – which will make the necessary purge of these leaderships with its will to look ahead and leave aside these dying political expressions which are already no more than personal [interests] without vision," concluded Safrán in his lengthy post.

He also praised Rovira’s “strategic vision” in backing Milei and the “surgical and transcendental intervention” made by the senators, before criticising the fragility of “old and decadent” political forces.

Milei's accusations

President Milei, however, offered a different version of events to his apparent Misiones ally. In a Monday interview, he denied claims that Rovira had contacted him to shift the senators’ votes during the Senate session.

Speaking to journalist Mariana Brey, he rejected the idea of any backroom deal and lashed out at Lospennato and PRO, insisting that the final draft of the bill “carried his name” and was his own. "I took Lospennato’s error-ridden bill and corrected it. The bill sent to the Senate was mine,” he told Brey.

"The problem is the 35 votes of the Kirchnerite thieves. Every time [Macri’s now defunct coalition] Juntos por el Cambio cuts a deal with the Kirchnerites, they blame me. Check my telephone, I have no problem, check it all you like and you can testify what you see. There is no call from Rovira,” he raged, going on to criticise the Clarín newspaper and journalists. 

He accused the newspaper of "inventing all kinds of horror stories about me" in order to "pressure" him into handing over telecommunications to its parent company in Argentina "so that they can do what they like.” 

The President accused Clarín’s journalists of being “lying machines” who are “on the take.”

He then claimed that Macri and Fernández de Kirchner had struck a deal to undermine him. “They didn’t have the votes,” he said. “All that about Rovira is a blatant lie.”

PRO pushback

Ex-president Macri fired back hours later, branding Milei’s comments “a serious hallucination.” He posted a video of Lospennato responding to the President’s remarks and voiced “infinite disappointment” at the comments.

"Javier, your statements on the Ficha Limpia vote are really a serious hallucination. I cannot believe how little you know me. My disappointment is infinite," wrote Macri on his official social media account.

Macri’s response followed Milei’s accusations that PRO had joined forces with Kirchnerism to sabotage the bill and that Macri was aligned with Fernández de Kirchner.

In the video, Lospennato insisted the bill was civic in origin and had long enjoyed public support. 

"Mr President, the Ficha Limpia is neither your bill nor mine, although I presented it for the first time in 2016 and have represented it uninterruptedly since,” she said.

She blamed the bill’s failure on Milei and rejected the idea of any pact between Macri and Kirchnerism, calling it “the least credible thing Argentines have heard in years.”

The PRO deputy continued: "What was yours was the responsibility for this bill becoming law, which it did not. I believed in it and many people did. But there is something worse than lying and that is believing your own lies."

She closed on a high note: “We Argentines never give up.”

– TIMES/NA/PERFIL