President Alberto Fernández will open this Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. the 140th period of ordinary sessions of Congress with a speech that arouses expectations due to the circumstances that the country and the world are going through, in what will be his third visit to Parliament at the command of the Executive and that will have as axes the agreement with the IMF and the ratification of economic growth as the priorities of his management for the second installment of his mandate.
With a speech prepared from the reports of each ministry, with the collaboration of the Secretary General of the Presidency, Julio Vitobello; and presidential adviser Alejandro Grimsonthe president will claim the recovery of economic activity of the last year and will put the focus on genuine job creation as another of the objectives to consolidate in the next two years.
Fernández will also refer in his message to the war between Ukraine and Russia, a humanitarian crisis that is prolonged and worries the entire planet but that, in addition, has global repercussions on the prices of energy and cereal commodities, so that could impact the current economy of Argentina.
On this point, the spokesperson for the Presidency, Gabriela Cerruti, told Télam a few days ago that The Head of State will address the escalation based on one of the principles that has characterized Argentine foreign policy in recent years: “territorial integrity”a concept that this morning was put forward by Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero in the UN Human Rights Council and that yesterday was deployed by Vice President Cristina Fernández through a Twitter thread.
Cerruti pointed out that Fernández will reaffirm the Argentine State policy in the face of controversies of this dimension, consisting of the need to safeguard “territorial integrity”, the “security of States” and “respect for human rights” as conditions that guarantee “solutions fair to conflicts.
Borders inside, the opening of the activity of the 140th period of ordinary sessions of the Parliament will be crossed by the will of the Front of All of give parliamentary ratification to the final agreement with the bodya commitment that the ruling coalition assumed by promoting and sanctioning in 2021 law 27612, which requires Congress to authorize any refinancing of the debt with the IMF.
The expectation is also focused on whether the President will announce the sending to Congress of the final project of the agreement with the Fund or if it will wait one or more days to differentiate the message of March 1 of this issue, in order to privilege the announcement of the objectives, among them – to cite one case – the conversion of social plans into genuine employment as well as two bills related to Mental Health and climate change.
On the other hand, the Legislative Assembly this Tuesday will have a new feature compared to that of 2021 since the restrictions imposed by the pandemic as a result of the drop in contagion were relaxeds and with the majority of the population vaccinated with a complete scheme, which was reflected in the summons decree that was published in the Official Gazette.
Cerruti, in this sense, defined tomorrow as “a particular March 1” in which “the strongest has been left behind”, although with the caution that the pandemic -the spokeswoman warned- “is not finished until we are sure that there are not new waves and new possibilities of contagion”.
The relief of the health prevention measures will contribute to the fact that the chamber of the Chamber of Deputies is in a position not only to have all the legislators present -257 deputies and 72 senators- but also with the special guests of this type of event: ambassadors, heads of the Armed Forces and security forces, as well as the Attorney General and the ministers of the Supreme Court.
All of them will be seated on both sides of Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who will direct the Assembly from the seat that corresponds to the head of the Senate, while the heads of the different parliamentary blocs will be on the different benches of the chamber, including the head of the bench of the Front of All in the lower house, Germán Martínez from Santa Fe.
Within hours of the opening of sessions, Martinez told Télam that beyond the international crossroads, the message of the head of state “It will have a look ahead, a look towards the future, trying to mark what are the steps that are coming and the challenges that we have as a country.”
“The government has been trying to get Argentina out of hell since it took office and has the obligation to keep thinking forward, thinking about the steps we will take when we take office,” he said, later recalling that the president has been stating that “The agreement with the Fund is one more step, neither the first nor the last”.
Fernandez de Kirchner will be in charge of opening the day together with the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Sergio Massabut before announcing the visit of the Head of State, the tradition of receiving him on the esplanade of Entre Ríos Street and signing the minutes book in the Blue Room of the Senate will be repeated, for which the deputies and senators who they will integrate the commissions of Exterior and Interior.
Outside the Legislative Palace, meanwhile, the President will be accompanied by a concentration made up of the Justicialista Party and other political spaces of the ruling party, more unions of the CGT and social movements, a call that was formalized in the last few hours through a post by the chief of staff Juan Manzur on his official Twitter account.
This March 1, after an important agreement with various and numerous sectors that make up the @FrontOfAllwe decided to mobilize in front of the National Congress to support the president @alferdez during the opening of the 140th Period of Ordinary Sessions
– Juan Manzur (@JuanManzurOK) February 26, 2022
The Legislative Assembly, on the other hand, will again show on the same stage different personalities from the official coalition, from Cabinet ministers to protagonists of the legislative debate such as the head of the FdT bloc in the Senate, José Mayans, from Formosa, or Deputy Máximo Kirchner, one month after his resignation as head of the ruling party.
Like every March 1, in this #OpeningSessions2022 We will present to the National Congress the #Memory2021a document that brings together the public policies implemented in the last year by each of the ministries and agencies of the National Public Administration. pic.twitter.com/Eq8O8IA5fd
– Juan Manzur (@JuanManzurOK) February 28, 2022
The expectation about what the President will say multiplied in the last hours; Among the legislators of the Peronist coalition they anticipate that the great effort of the Executive for the next biennium will be to sustain the growth of 2021 “with the challenge of social inclusion”, as Deputy Marcelo Casaretto (FdT-Entre Ríos) highlighted today, who reviewed that last year Argentina “grew 10.3% in its GDP, grew 15% in industry, 30% in construction and 42% in exports.”
