Thursday, May 3, 2012

UCR's Deputy Aguad says party backs YPF expropriation due to 'pressures'

Radical Party’s Oscar Aguad assured today that a large majority of his Radical fellow-lawmakers reject the YPF draft bill to expropriate 51 percent of energy company YPF sponsored by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, but they have been “pressured during the past two weeks” to back the project.

Aguad was one of the first lawmakers to make public his disagreement with the project presented by the Executive power that is widely expected to be voted into law by a huge margin later today. His attitude lifted a wave of controversies and cross fire coming from the opposition and even his own ranks.

During a radio interview with La Red AM station, the deputy remarked that “There are many Radical party’s lawmakers that think the same as me and were willing to join me, but unfortunately that have been pressured for the last to weeks to don the contrary and vote in favour of the bill.”

Likewise, Aguad justified his rejection to the bill saying that “I don’t want to be accomplice of the national government who is responsible for the current energy crisis.”

Meanwhile, the head of the Radical Party’s bloc in the Lower House Ricardo Gil Lavedra asked his deputies “to not go against the party’s organic resolutions.”

Likewise, Deputy Ricardo Alfonsín aimed to Aguad by saying that there are colleagues “that seem to show no trust in the Argentine State, and instead believe that leave everything to the market is the best that can happen to the country.”