That relationship with Irrazábal was strategic. The Senator directed his whole team, especially his niece, Silvina Irrazábal, to work with the BAUEN cooperative and its expropriation bill. “Since the day I met her and we had the first meeting, Silvina talked with me daily,” relates Tonarelli. This is how meetings were organized with Alfredo Martínez, a radical from Santa Cruz, and with Juan Manuel Abal Medina, Senator from the Front for Victory for the province of Buenos Aires. Martínez was president of the Committee of Administrative and Municipal Affairs, and Abal Medina, president of the Senate Budget Committee. “Analysis of the BAUEN bill had begun in these two committees, and the year was winding down, we were already practically at the end of 2016,” continues the President of FACTA, who also recalls that:
Finally, seeing that there was no agreement in their committees to advance, they called a plenary meeting of the two committees, but only on the last day of sessions. The last day, in the last session, they call a plenary of committees in the morning, practically at the same time the session began.
They did not have quorum, and the meeting did not happen. The opportunity to pass the bill through the committees was lost. Almost at the same time, the chamber session was beginning. When it looked like everything was going to fail, Irrazábal announced to the workers that he was going to ask for the bill to be introduced from the floor, and for Miguel Ángel Pichetto, the party leader, to accept it. Time was ticking away, independent of the number of bills that had to be dealt with. The closure of the session at midnight was inescapable, and the time the bill would expire was approaching. If time ran out, the bill with half-approval of the Deputies would die, and could not be raised again. As of noon, the bill had not even been listed among those to be addressed.