The nationalist senator, Sergio Botana, spoke of the Broad Front this Tuesday in Parliament to defend the nationalist senator, Graciela Bianchi, at a time when it was being discussed whether it was appropriate to sanction the conservative legislator.
“Senator Bianchi is a highly educated senator, as a notary, as a lawyer, as a teacher, with a political career in which she was not always in this party”, began the senator from the United sector of the PN.
“When was it questioned before when you were director of the Bauzá Lyceum, during periods of government of other parties? When was she questioned in her character as senator Araújo’s secretary?”, he continued.
He later added that the FA “It hurts her a lot” to have lost Bianchi as a militant, and that is why she is criticized. “What is questioned here is having lost Senator Bianchi. The loss hurts, and Senator Bianchi hurts them for what it is worth, it hurts them a lot, because she is worth a lot, ”argued the legislator.
For the Colorado Party senator, Carmen Asiaín, the issue was a “contradiction” because “the note presented by the Broad Front on December 7 (2021) is that it needs advice from the Constitution commission, but it turns out that the commission, which is an advisor to the Senate, is not an advisory commission of a bench in particular. Then, the request urgently, on what grounds? We are witnessing this treatment of the issue when the request for reports has already been answered by the MEC, which gave it course because it understood that it was appropriate.
FA rejection
From the sidewalk in front, the senator of the MPP, Charles Carrera Leal pointed out that issues of importance to society should be discussed instead of talking about Bianchi, but that “everything has a limit and the bench (of the FA) makes this proposal -as a political matter- due to a host of misconduct by Senator Bianchi that harm the institutionality of the body.
For his co-religionist, José Carlos Mahía, the substance of the matter “It is not in the right of free expression that the senator has or in the powers conferred on her by the Constitution”, but “in a series of excesses that the Broad Front bench understands have been committed”.
“In addition, they have been developed in a series of promotions of attitudes and behaviors that we reject. We parliamentarians have the immunity granted by the Constitution when carrying out our work”, continued Mahía, alluding to parliamentary privileges.
“But when the concept is confused with impunity in our actions, the things that have been described happen. The possibility of to persecute press professionals for their ideas, to persecute trade union leaders for their public demonstrations. The disqualification of the other as an adversary and not the healthy debate of ideas in which we can confront or disagree in the country. This is a different category, lies, disqualification and persecution as a political tool must be banished from the system and from the practice of our work. We believe that this type of attitude harms the democratic system as a whole and Parliament as an institution”, concluded Mahía.
He was a member of the left
At the time he was making these statements, Botana was interrupted by the president of the Chamber at the time, Jorge Gandini, for being a political and personal allusion.
Currently, Bianchi is acting Vice President of the Republic while Beatriz Argimón is touring Russia and Ukraine in an attempt, as she herself said, to promote dialogue between both parties to end the war in Ukraine.
Before joining the right-wing party, Bianchi had actually been a member of the FA. She came to vote for José Mujica in 2009 but then decided to leave for the PN’s Aire Fresco movement, invited by then-deputy Luis Lacalle Pou.
