Deputy Hector Olivares, 61, was taking a walk in the square outside the National Congress at 7.00am (1000 GMT) with his friend Marcelo Yadon when they were ambushed from a car.

Olivares was hit with three bullets and is in surgery, his spokesman Hector Lencinas said. Yadon, 58, took five hits and died, lawmaker Jose Cano told television station Canal TN.

“We never received any threats of any type in the office. It’s an open office were everyone is welcomed. (Olivares) was very calm,” Lencinas told reporters.

Cano called the shooting a “premeditated act.”

“The information we have is that the car was parked half an hour before, they were waiting for (Olivares) because he would go out for a walk in that place every day with Yadon,” said Cano.

He said the two men shared an apartment close to where they were attacked and were childhood friends.

Olivares is a member of the criminal legislation committee and was working on a football-related violence initiative.

“I want to believe that it was a mistake. Olivares is an agricultural producer, a good man, a family man, we feel terrible,” Julio Martinez, a senator in Olivares’s home province of La Rioja, told Canal TN.

“Clearly it was an attack, there’s no sign of a robbery,” he added.