Argentine legislators vote to end broad immunity for officials

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Reuters) -- Argentina's lower house of congress, under pressure from a bribes-for-votes scandal, voted on Thursday to end a sweeping immunity protecting lawmakers, judges and government ministers from prosecution.

The Chamber of Deputies voted 202 to 5 to pass the bill. It will now go to the Senate, where it is expected to be quickly approved -- neatly ending a standoff with a federal judge who last week asked for 11 of the Senate's 69 members to be stripped of their immunity from prosecution.

The president must sign the bill for it to become law.

The Senate has postponed consideration of the request by Federal Judge Carlos Liporaci in connection with alleged bribes paid to pass a government-sponsored labor market law in April.

Stripping eight opposition Peronists and three members of President Fernando de la Rua's governing Alliance of their immunity would also end their right to vote in the Senate. The Peronists were keen to avoid granting the judge's request because it would cost them their majority in the chamber.

The new law will still not allow judges to arrest congressmen and government ministers without authorization from Congress. But it does grant judges the power to interrogate them as suspects -- allowing Liporaci to investigate the bribes scandal without any senators losing their seats.

"This law will mean everyone has to testify. There won't be anybody, no official in the country, who will be able to avoid cooperating or testifying before a judge," said Deputy Elisa Carrio, of the center-left Alliance, who proposed the bill.

She said the bribes-for-votes scandal was an opportunity to clean up Argentina's notoriously dirty politics because it had created the impetus needed to pass her bill.

The scandal has dramatically put to the test De la Rua's election promise to end the corruption that flourished under Peronist President Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

But De la Rua, who is attending the Millennium Summit in New York and will be gone until mid-September, has said he believes Labor Minister Alberto Flamarique and secret service chief Fernando de Santibanes when they say that they paid no bribes.

Liporaci says he thinks bribes came from state coffers.

Interior Minister Federico Storani said ministers could yet lose their jobs over the scandal. But, speaking in New York, De la Rua repeated that no resignations were in the cards.

Despite protests from the government that the Senate could not function properly without first surrendering the immunity of the lawmakers under suspicion, the chamber met on Wednesday to approve a law to fight tax evasion. It was expected to approve a another key bill granting the government extra powers to restructure debts and fire staff later on Thursday.

Old political hands, including former President Raul Alfonsin, have declared themselves shocked by the revelations that bribes could have been paid in the nation's Senate. But such protestations have been met with skepticism.

"Corruption in the Senate? You don't say! And only in the Senate? The vast majority of people are convinced that bribes flow through the veins of our society like red blood cells through the circulatory system," wrote newspaper La Nacion.

"I don't think we'll ever get rid of bribes. They've been around as long as Christ," said Luis Barrionuevo, a union leader linked to Menem.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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