Amid spate of attacks on women, Argentina's Macri seeks to cut Gender Violence Prosecutor's office.
A congressional bill sponsored by the administration of Argentine President Mauricio Macri was denounced by opposition lawmakers as rescinding the office of the Federal Prosecutor on Gender Violence (UFEM) by omission.
The UFEM office was created by a bill signed on June 3, 2015, by Macri's predecessor, former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, to coordinate prosecutions of violence against women as well as abatement measures. One in ten Argentine women polled in 2013 said they had suffered domestic violence at least once in their lives; of 286 women murdered in Argentina in 2015, 89% were murdered in the home and 72% by a husband, partner, or ex.
The ranking member of the Committee on Institutional Affairs, Marianela Labozzetta of the center-left FpV, stressed that because UFEM operates under the purview of the Office of the Attorney General, any bill that proposes to modify the AG charter would eliminate UFEM it the clause governing it were excluded, as is the case in the current version of the bill.
The bill was introduced by members of President Macri's right-wing PRO party primarily to impose an unrenewable term limit of five years for the post of Attorney General, the nation's top prosecutor. Opposition lawmakers denounced its true intent that of removing the current Attorney General, Alejandra Gils Carbó.
Gils Carbó, 58, was appointed to her post by former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in August 2012, and is seen by the administration as a key obstacle to its push to exert tighter control over Argentina's federal prosecutors.
News of the UFEM omission emerged the same day that marches took place nationwide to protest violence against women under the banner of Ni Una Menos - 'Not One Woman Less'. The October 19 marches were prompted by the brutal slaying of 16-year old Lucía Pérez by rapists; similar marches were held the same day in neighboring Chile following the murder of 9-year old Florencia Aguirre by her stepfather.
Congressman Pablo Tonelli, a senior PRO member and chairman of the Committee on Institutional Affairs, claimed the rescission was an "oversight" and promised to include the UFEM in the final draft. Similar oversights, however, in decrees signed by President Macri - notably decrees rescinding the 2005 Education Financing Law (which established that public education spending be no less than 6% of GDP) and the 2006 National Education Law (which made high school compulsory to grade 12) - were never remedied.
Congresswoman Labozzetta believes that preventing violence against women "isn't on the administration's agenda," and pointed out that Buenos Aires Province Governor María Eugenia Vidal - whom Macri is grooming for the PRO nomination in 2019 - has spent a mere 2% of the budget passed by the Provincial Legislature for gender violence abatement.
At: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://www.diariohuarpe.com/actualidad/nacionales/el-gobierno-eliminaria-la-unidad-fiscal-de-violencia-contra-la-mujer/&prev=search
And: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.politicargentina.com%2Fnotas%2F201610%2F17278-omitieron-la-creacion-de-cualquier-estructura-fiscal-que-investigue-los-crimenes-de-genero.html
