“He better avoid walking out to his balcony,” said an incandescent José Mayans (Peronist Senator for the province of Formosa) during his speech in a last-minute session analysing the fate of disgraced Senator Edgardo Kueider. “He knows too much, let’s hope he doesn’t fall from the seventh floor,” added Mayans, who is ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s eyes and ears in the Senate, where Kueider’s expulsion will grant the Unión por la Patria caucus an additional lawmaker, bringing their number of votes to 34, only two shy of quorum capacity. “He’s messed with some heavy-hitters and he knows it,” continued the Formosa senator.
“They are protecting him now, but what will happen later, what else does Kueider know that he’s got protection from?” Mayans lashed out against the libertarians and Mauricio Macri’s PRO party, alleging that they had bribed legislators to pass the so-called ‘ ’ mega-package of structural reforms. Indeed, Kueider won his Senate seat for the province of Entre Ríos on the same ballot as Fernández de Kirchner in 2019, when she shared the ticket with Alberto Fernández. He later jumped ship along with Carlos Mauricio ‘Camau’ Espínola in 2024, and had since been vetted by star political advisor Santiago Caputo to lead the Bicameral Legislative Intelligence Commission, a position ultimately taken by Unión Cívica Radical (UCR) chief Martín Lousteau.
Kueider ended up presiding over the Constitutiona.