After the swearing-in and installation of the new National Congress, the party benches, from the right to the left, agreed to elect Senator Álvaro Elizalde (PS) as the next head of the Upper House.
Considering the new political cycle and the debate in the Constitutional Convention about an eventual end to the Senate and moving to a unicameral system, the senators of the UDI decided to make a strategic move and yielded the first year of the presidency to the Socialist Party (PS), in given that this coalition can influence between the conventionalists of his party and the Government of President Gabriel Boric, to prevent progress or lessen the effects of ending the Upper House.
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While the discussions are taking place in the Plenary of the Convention and with the new government recently installed in La Moneda, the new President of the Senate was emphatic in pointing out that the Upper House has to do its job. In this sense, he stated: “Let there be no doubt that there is a willingness to collaborate because it is the role that corresponds to the National Congress.”
Elizalde raised —in conversation with Cooperative Radio—that “all the bills that are presented by the Executive will be processed in a good way and, in addition, the initiatives presented by the parliamentarians themselves, all tending to improve the quality of life of Chileans.”
“There are many demands that must be taken care of, there are many transformations that need to be promoted,” Senator Elizalde added to the radio medium. And he reiterated that “the important thing is that the Senate does a job of excellence, diligent, quickly to advance those initiatives that are essential. Our willingness will always be to contribute so that the country does well.”
“Next week we should have a coordination meeting with the Minister Secretary General of the Presidency (Giorgio Jackson) where he is going to let us know what the specific priorities are regarding the bills that are already being processed or those that the government is going to present,” said the helmsman of the Senate and a PS militant.
“On that basis, we will talk with the different committees to carry out a plan. The Senate has to do its job, and its job is: to study the bills, that the senators and senators pronounce on the basis of their convictions regarding this initiative, but let there be no doubt that there is a willingness to collaborate because it is the role that corresponds to the National Congress,” said the legislator for El Maule, former Superintendent of Social Security in the first government of Michelle Bachelet (2008 and 2010), and former Minister Secretary General of the Government in the second presidency of Bachelet (2014 and 2015).
