Facundo Iglesia 
Two libertarian candidates, Lucas Luna and Verónica Sikora, were widely condemned after they discriminated against two different disabled people related to Juntos por el Cambio (JxC). Luna was forced to step down from his candidacy and Sikora made an apology video on Twitter.
“Not only here [in Argentina], but all over the world, right-wing parties espouse ideas of an anti-egalitarian authoritarianism,” Greta Pena, chairwoman of the National Institute Against Discrimination, Racism and Xenophobia (INADI, by its Spanish acronym,) told the Herald. “So I don’t think it was a coincidence.”
Both Luna and Sikora are political leaders within Argentine libertarian circles, closely allied with presidential candidate Javier Milei. Luna was running for the Mercosur Parliament while Sikora is a mayoral candidate in Córdoba.
“People want to vote for someone who looks like them”
On Monday, an audio clip of Luna speaking on a Twitter space about Franco Rinaldi —one of JxC’s candidates for Buenos Aires City lawmaker—went viral on social media.
“Nobody —and I say this with all the good grace in the world— nobody wants to vote for a disabled person,” Luna said about Rinaldi, who has osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic disorder that results in bones that break easily and, in his case, short stature.
“People want to vote for someone who looks like them. That’s the reality. That’s the way it is.”
Shortly after Luna’s remarks surfaced on social media, Rinaldi “deeply rejected” Luna’s sayings on a Twitter thread. “The tone of his remarks generated a lot of sorrow in me, and his statements, which I consider sincere, despite a certain slyness, are incorrect,” he wrote.
Rinaldi said he was “good proof that a person with a disability can be tremendously electable and eventually highly voted for.”
Politicians from different parties quickly jumped in to support Rinaldi. Interior Minister Eduardo “Wado” De Pedro tweeted that he “regretted” Luna’s discriminatory remarks.
“They go beyond politics and damage the values of a plural and inclusive society,” he said.
However, Rinaldi rejected De Pedro’s support.
“I think he is taking political advantage of the situation,” he said in an interview with La Nación.
Luna resigned from his candidacy after the news broke, a decision Milei took credit for.
“I personally would leave them with their mother”
Sikora, for her part, spoke against JxC’s Córdoba’s former governor candidate, Luis Juez for “showing” how her daughter Milagros, who has cerebral palsy, voting last Sunday.
“Any parent who has a disabled child or a baby –I mean a person who cannot fend for themselves, who needs permanent assistance– shouldn’t vote while showing their child,” Sikora said in a video that went viral on social media. “I don’t know, it’s like very low, very low. I personally would leave them with their mother. I’m tired of what I’m seeing. I’m sick of it. I find the politics we have deplorable, deplorable. It’s disgusting.”
In a video he uploaded on his social media, Juez said he was “terribly proud” of his daughter, who voted for the first time at age 22.
“Milagros had to be in the school voting, not hidden in the house as you want,” he said. “You hurt us and unnecessarily offended us and her.”
Buenos Aires Mayor and presidential hopeful “deeply condemned” both Sikora and Luna’s remarks. “We work every day to build a more inclusive, plural and empathetic society,” he tweeted. “We will not give place to offenses and baseness, and much less if it is to get one more vote.”
Yesterday, Sikora apologized “sincerely” in a Twitter video.
“I never wanted to discriminate against anyone, and I would never do it, what I did was to give a vision, an opinion,” she said. “I do not agree with exposing one’s personal life in politics.”
Greta Pena, the INADI chairwoman, told the Herald that both cases were “serious.”
“They go against the very foundations of democracy,” she said. “It is worrisome that [those remarks] come from political leaders, who have a privileged way of reaching society. They go against the very foundations of democracy.”
Pena welcomed, however, the fact that both Luna and Sikora apologized. “It was the self-regulation of the subjects themselves and not a path of punishment.”
The INADI made itself available to Juez and Rinaldi — the latter rejected the possibility of taking any action.
