José Pampuro
José Juan Bautista Pampuro is an Argentine politician. He is a member of the Justicialist Party, was formerly a Defense Minister and is currently a senator for Buenos Aires Province. He serves as the Senate provisional President and is second in line for the presidential succession.
Pampuro was born in Buenos Aires in 1949. He enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires and earned a Medical Degree. He entered public service in 1983, when he was named Public Health Secretary to the Mayor of Lanús, Manuel Quindimil. He was elected to the Lower House of Congress on the populist Justicialist Party ticket in 1987, and was named Minister of Health and Social Policy for Buenos Aires Province by newly elected Governor Eduardo Duhalde in 1991.
He was named director of the Buenos Aires Provincial Office in 1993, and remained in the post until being returned by voters to Congress in 1999. Eduardo Duhalde, appointed President of Argentina by Congress during a crisis in 2002, named Pampuro Chief of Staff, and on May 25, 2003, he was retained in government by President Néstor Kirchner, who named Pampuro his first Defense Minister.
Pampuro was elected to the Senate on the Front for Victory slate alongside Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in the 2005 mid-term elections, in which the center-left Front for Victory did well. He was elected Provisional President of the Senate on February 22, 2006, putting him second in line to the presidency, and twice as President of the Mercosur Parliament.
Pampuro retired from the Senate in 2011 with the distinction of being the first man in Argentina to twice be succeeded by women who were first to hold their respective posts: as Defense Minister by Nilda Garré, and as Provisional President of the Senate by Beatriz Rojkés de Alperovich.
