Martín Sabbatella

Martín Sabbatella (born 14 April 1970) is an Argentine politician and leader of the New Encounter party. From 1999 to 2009, he was intendente (mayor) of Morón, a partido in the Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area. He was also a member of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies from 2009 to 2013, and director of the Federal Authority for Audiovisual Communication Services from 2012 to 2015. From 2020 to 2023, Sabbatella was the chairman of the Matanza–Riachuelo Basin Authority (ACUMAR).

Early life and career Sabbatella was born in the western Buenos Aires suburb of Morón in 1970. He enrolled at the Manuel Dorrego National Middle School, where he became active in the Communist Party of Argentina. He served as Secretary of the center-left Frepaso caucus in the Morón City Council from 1995, and in 1997, was elected to the body on the Alliance ticket recently formed with the centrist Radical Civic Union (UCR). He is married to psychologist and fellow politician Mónica Macha, with whom he has one daughter.

Mayor of Morón An institutional crisis developed in the city government when, in December 1998, Mayor Juan Carlos Rousselot was suspended amid corruption charges. Sabbatella was named to head the committee investigating Rousselot, and the latter was impeached. A fiscal conservative, he trimmed the municipal workforce by 1,000 (23%) and reduced the city's debt by over 20%; his rescission of the waste collection service subcontracted during the Rousselot tenure alone saved the city nearly us$6 million annually. and in 2007 served as coordinator of Mercosur's Municipal Advisory Forum. Reelected as Mayor in 2007, he earned a Konex Award in 2008 for his work in public administration, He later reaped controversy, however, by signing a municipal ordinance in February 2009 that would donate stray animals to laboratories for animal testing.

Congressional term and AFSCA Sabbatella ran for a seat in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies in 2009, merging his Encounter ticket with the leftist Free of the South Movement, the Communist Party, and others into a Nuevo Encuentro ("New Encounter"). Garnering fourth place in the province, the party nevertheless elected two members to Congress: Sabbatella and Graciela Iturraspe (Mar del Plata). He expressed support for President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner ahead of the 2011 general elections. He ran for Governor of Buenos Aires on his New Encounter ticket later in the year, and obtained fourth place (6.4%). He remained as head of the New Encounter caucus in the Lower House.

Sabbatella was appointed director of the Federal Authority on Audiovisual Communication Services (AFSCA) on October 1, 2012, at the height of ongoing controversies between Clarín and Kirchnerism over a 2009 anti-trust law that would limit the number of radio and television licenses held by the Clarín Group (the premier media conglomerate in Argentina).