The President of the Chamber of Deputies, Sergio Massa will hold a meeting this Tuesday afternoon with the heads of the main opposition blocs in the Lower House and will also receive the governor of Jujuy, Gerardo Morales, in search of achieving greater consensus in view of the special session that will be held between Thursday and Friday to debate the agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which yesterday began to be debated in a committee plenary.
Massa will receive the block leaders of Together for Change and also of other opposition groupsone day before the signing of the opinion of the agreement with the IMF, in an attempt to advance in greater consensus before the session.
According to parliamentary sources told Télam, “Massa agrees to a request from the opposition” and, in this context, “he will listen to the proposals that reach him and will ask them to formulate them in writing.”
To that meeting, the main opposition bench will take what was agreed upon at the party meeting: endorse the agreement but not support the economic financing program included in one of the articles.
According to spokespersons for JxC, its legislators would propose that this article approving the so-called ‘fine print’ be replaced by another that empowers the Minister of the Economy to coordinate the negotiation with the IMF.
They condition this change in the wording of the articles to the general support of the project, something that until today is taken for granted, at least by the more moderate wing of the coalition.
Once the opposition formalizes this proposal in writing, Massa and the authorities of the FDT bloc will analyze the proposals with their team of advisers and then discuss it with President Alberto Fernández.sources revealed.
The leaders of the UCR, the PRO, the Civic Coalition, Radical Evolution and the Federal Meeting, as well as the Federal Interbloc, will participate in the meeting, in addition to the authorities of the ruling party, Germán Martínez (president) and Cecilia Moreau (vice president).
Meanwhile, a new day of the plenary session of the Budget and Finance commissions takes place, where governors, trade unionists and different organizations speak.
The chief of staff, Juan Manzur, receives a group of governors at Government House and then they will go to the Chamber of Deputies, where they plan to meet with Massa.
Meanwhile, representatives of the CGT, the CTA, the Corriente Federal de Trabajadores, CTA Autónoma, Conicet, Unión Industrial Argentina (UIA), Grupo de los 6, CAME, CGERA (General Confederation of Entrepreneur, IPA (Industrial Argentine SMEs), from the PRO TEJER Foundation, Apyme (Assembly of Small and Medium Entrepreneurs) and ENAC (National Entrepreneurs for Development), after which the provincial leaders will present.
Search for consensus
According to parliamentary sources, Massa will continue to search for consensus and plans to receive, in this framework, the governor of Jujuy, Gerardo Morales, who ratified that Together for Change will generally support the agreement with the IMF, although he acknowledged that there are divergent positions that would result in votes of abstention but not against the understanding.
On Monday, while the first day of the plenary session of the Budget and Treasury and Finance commissions was taking place, with the presence of high-ranking government officials, various conversations and informal meetings took place between deputies from the different benches regarding these positions.
The objective of the ruling party is to sign an opinion on Wednesday so that the project can be discussed by the plenary of the Lower House in a special session that would be requested for Thursday or, at the latest, Friday.
