Abortion: who is Guillermo Snopek, the only senator who abstained in the historic vote

William Snopek (Frente de Todos-Jujuy) was one of the protagonists of the historic debate in the Senate over the bill to legalize abortion. Snopek, who in 2018 had voted against terminating the pregnancy, was the only senator to abstain.

Before the initiative of the ruling party was discussed on the premises, the Kirchner bishops were confident that they would win the support of Snopek. But the senator yesterday ratified his position against abortion and called for a popular consultation so that “the people define.” “I continue to hold my position against the project and I recognize that we have done absolutely nothing since 2018. For this reason, I think there has to be a popular consultation so that it is the people who define”, affirmed the official legislator during his intervention in the debate.

Lawyer and son of a former Peronist governor of JujuySnopek is a leader of the Jujuy PJ with an extensive legislative career. Before coming to his seat in the Senate in December 2017, He was a provincial legislator and national deputy. In the lower house he was a member of the Bloque Justicialista, the space made up of the dialogist Peronists who moved away from Kirchnerism after the victory of Mauricio Macri in 2015.

With the return of Kirchnerism to the Casa Rosada in December 2019, Snopek joined the bench of the Frente de Todos, under the leadership of the vice president Cristina Kirchner, who managed to align Peronism in the upper house.

A staunch rival of Gerardo Morales, governor of Jujuy, Snopek last February promoted a project for the Executive Power to intervene in the Judicial Power of that province for a period of one year. “Nor did Alberto give me order [Fernández] by Cristina [Kirchner]”, The official senator, Tulia Snopek’s brother, who married Morales in 2018, assured at that time.

Snopek promoted the initiative to intervene the Judicial Power of Jujuy after they learned of audios in which Pablo Baca, then a member and today president of the Superior Court of Justice of that province, mentions that the judges who ordered the arrest of Miracle Room They did not do it for their crimes, “but to avoid returning to the permanent quilombo to the cuts, to the burning of tires.”

After presenting the project, the official senator said that he did not seek to benefit Sala, as stated by Governor Morales, one of the referents of Together for Change. “I have been proposing the intervention of the Judicial Power in Jujuy 4 years ago. Morales wants to reduce the issue to a family fight. I have not had a relationship with my sister for more than 10 years”, he claimed.

With his controversial move, Snopek generated a political conflict for the Casa Rosada with Morales and Juntos por el Cambio. Finally, the president Alberto Fernandezcame out to detach from the project. “Although there are situations that concern one (in Jujuy), one must be very careful,” said the head of state.

Last October, the Jujuy leader starred in an unusual and unprecedented episode since the beginning of the virtual sessions in Congress: he voted from a car for the palliative care and telemedicine projects approved by the Senate.