A lawmaker in Argentina obviously could not help himself - not by raising his voice to debate a bill - but by performing acts unbecoming of a public servant on live camera.
Representative Juan Emilio Ameri of the ruling Peronist party has resigned after being seen touching his partner during a virtual Congress session on Thursday.
The legislator was then caught partially pulling down the woman's shirt and kissing one of her breasts as she sat on his lap, to the shock of his fellow deputies as the lawmakers conducted a special meeting broadcast live on Zoom.
In a Twitter statement on Friday, members of the lower house said they had voted to accept Ameri's resignation, a representative from Salta in the ruling Frene de Todos alliance.
Video of the lewd act quickly made the rounds on social media, triggering disgust and even anger which quickly led to voting in which the chamber of deputies put the 47-year-old policymaker under suspension pending an investigation.
Congress president Sergio Massa interrupted the virtual meeting to report what he calls "a serious offense" by a legislator and called for the formation of a panel to expedite Ameri's expulsion. The committee later accepted Ameri's resignation.
Online meetings in the face of an ongoing global health crisis have caused legislators to make a mistake before. In June this year, Luke Ming Flanagan of Ireland appeared to be wearing no pants as he talked about agriculture policies with his colleagues in the European Parliament.
Two months before that, a California government official was forced to quit his post after he was caught in a live Zoom meeting tossing his cat and calling the animal "little b***h".
After his suspension, Ameri said the woman in the footage was his partner and that he thought during the meeting that he was not connected live. He said he believed he did not have an internet connection but was reconnected automatically. "I am very ashamed, I feel very bad," he said, as reported by the Buenos Aires Times.
What he did, Ameri added, was merely to give the woman a "kiss" because she had breast implant surgery 10 days earlier, the report disclosed.
In a statement, the ruling coalition said that the incident had shown a lack of respect for Congress and the people of Argentina. "We cannot allow irresponsibility of this degree," the party stated before Ameri's resignation was confirmed by Congress, Reuters reported.
