Beltrones, one of the most anticipated for registration in the Senate; will install the new legislature

Andrea Becerril and Georgina Saldierna

The newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, August 21, 2024, p. 12

Yesterday, the registration of legislators who won their seats at the polls began in the Senate, and one of the most anticipated was the PRI member Manlio Fabio Beltrones Rivera, who will preside over the Board of Deans, responsible for installing the new legislature, which will begin work on September 1st.

Beltrones and the majority of elected legislators decided to wait, since they have eight days to go for their credentials, deliver the documentation and put their fingerprint in order to vote on the electronic board, in addition to providing the biometric data, necessary to be able to enter the headquarters at Reforma and Insurgentes.

On the first day, only 15 people completed the process to register as members of the 66th and 67th legislatures. The first was PAN member Miguel Ángel Yunes Márquez, who faces accusations of tax fraud and document forgery; he avoided making statements.

In fact, the registration room can be accessed directly by elevator, without going through the central courtyard, and several elected senators, including Morena’s Saúl Monreal, also preferred to avoid the press. The same did Luis Armando Melgar (PVEM) and Enrique Vargas (PAN), former municipal president of Huixquilucan, state of Mexico.

This is the first time that a substitute senator will directly assume the position. This is Tabasco native Alejandra Arias Trevilla (Morena), since the incumbent, Rosalinda Hernández, passed away after the election. In an interview, she said that she will put all her effort into the new position, in honor of Rosalinda, sister of who will be her coordinator, Adán Augusto López Hernández.

Imelda Castro and Félix Salgado Macedonio, from Morena, who will repeat their six-year term as senators, also attended the process. They said that their mission will be to approve the judicial reform and agreed that they will manage to convince the three legislators from other parties, in order to complete the votes they will need to obtain a qualified majority.

They were joined by María Martina Kantún from Campeche and Laura Estrada Mauro from Oaxaca, who are coming to the chamber for the first time.

Meanwhile, it has already been determined that Beltrones will be the president of the Board of Deans, the body in charge of conducting the election of the board of directors that will operate starting on September 1, as well as of swearing in the new legislators. Also part of that board will be Morena members José Antonio Álvarez Lima and Óscar Cantón Zetina, who, like Beltrones, are senators for the third time, except that the PRI member from Sonora is the one with the longest legislative seniority.

There is still no agreement on the election of the Senate president for the first year of the legislature, and the fight is between the guindas Ignacio Mier, who will arrive through the plurinominal route, and Imelda Castro.

In the Chamber of Deputies, according to Senator Ricardo Monreal, the person who will preside over the board of directors has not yet been decided, since there are eight registered candidates: four women, among them Ifigenia Martínez, Olga Sánchez Cordero and Dolores Padierna, in addition to Leonel Godoy and Sergio Gutiérrez Luna.

Monreal stressed that the opinion of the president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, is very strong in the Morena group, and she has already declared that she would like deputies Ifigenia Martínez or Olga Sánchez Cordero to place the presidential sash on her. However, he said, that will be defined until the plenary meeting of the group that he will coordinate in San Lázaro.