The Chamber of Deputies will resume its parliamentary activity on Monday 23 with the treatment of the twenty issues included by the Executive Power in the agenda of extraordinary sessions, while leaders of the ruling party and Together for Change (JxC) try to resume the dialogue after the unsuccessful calls last December and in the framework of the opposition questioning the project of impeachment of the Supreme Court.
The inclusion in the agenda of extraordinary sessions -convened to be held between next Monday, February 23 and 28- of impeachment request to the members of the Supreme Courtof the project on the composition of the Council of the Magistracy and the one that establishes the numerical expansion of the highest judicial court put JxC on alert.
The main opposition bench refuses to address the rest of the issues due to what they consider “an attack on the Court and the institutional framework” by the Governmentfrom the deep differences that separate both spaces in relation to issues related to Justice.
From the parliamentary sector of the Frente de Todos (FdT) maintain, instead, that “JxC’s intention is to paralyze Congress, be it with that or another argument”and recall that “in December they failed two sessions that included issues such as the creation of universities and the social security moratorium.”
During the last weeks – prior to the presentation of the request for trial to the ministers of the Court – some informal dialogues between leaders of the ruling party and JxC had begun to take place, although without agreements in sight.
According to parliamentary sources, progress had been made in some requests for reciprocal apologies in relation to what happened in the embarrassing session of December 1 that ended with shouting, insults and even some obscene gesture among the deputies themselves.
From that session arose requests for crossed expulsions that involved half a dozen deputies from both sectors, and which days later added a similar presentation made by the FdT on Gerardo Milman (PRO) for his alleged links to the attack against Vice President Cristina Fernández and for the irregular hiring of numerous advisers in the Ministry of Security when he worked in that structure.
To JxC’s refusal to participate in the rest of the agenda for being against the inclusion of issues related to Justice, the official Eduardo Valdés responded: “They say they are going to sit in the Impeachment Commission, but because we do the political trial will not sit down for the rest of the issues. There is an inconsistency. It seems that they need to be the lawyers of the judges of the Court”.
“They say that they are going to sit on the Impeachment Committee, but because we do the impeachment they are not going to sit on the rest of the issues. There is an inconsistency. It seems that they need to be the lawyers of the Court judges”Eduardo Valdes
Through the middle link, the president of the Federal interblock, Alejandro “Topo” Rodríguez, summarized: “Apparently a hard logic would be imposing on institutional issues and that will prevent consensus from being achieved on some issues promoted by the Ministry of Economy. It is not an opposition problem; the government must solve it”.
This conglomerate of eight deputies is nothing less than the third force in the Chamber, and is key to unlocking any initiative resisted by some of the two majority blocks-interblocks.
“Apparently a hard logic would be imposing on institutional issues and that will prevent consensus from being achieved on some issues promoted by the Ministry of Economy. It is not an opposition problem; the Government must resolve it”Alexander Rodriguez
In this scenario, everything seems to indicate that parliamentary activity will resume on Wednesday 25 or Thursday 26 with the launch of the impeachment commissionone or two days after the CELAC Summit that will convene other presidents of the region in Buenos Aires.
The idea is to start one of those two days and hold at least two meetings per week between the remainder of January and the end of March, approximately, to gather evidence related to the requests for prosecution of the ministers of the Court.
At least until March 1, when the ordinary session begins, the ruling party must seek consensus to deal with the extraordinary agenda, in which, beyond the issues related to Justice, the economic agenda promoted by the government prevails. Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa.
This agenda includes projects on money laundering, the promotion of new energies and value-added investments in the energy sector and the so-called ‘Monotribute Tech’initiatives of imminent parliamentary presentation.
Also from the Ministry of Economy they await the project referred to the agro-industrial law; the one that updates legislation against money laundering; the one that establishes the modification of INDEC and the one that foresees some reallocations in the 2023 Budget, an issue related to the Court’s ruling on co-participation.
In the event of reaching consensus, the pro-government deputies will once again insist on the projects for a pension moratorium and the creation of universities, which were on the agenda of the failed session on December 21, the last day in which the legislators saw each other’s faces in the enclosure.
Other projects that make up the package that the lower house must address – some eight correspond to the Senate – are the one that establishes the creation of the El Palmar National Park; the one that approves the National Science, Technology and Innovation Plan 2030; the one that launches the Single Federal Program for Computerization and Digitization of Medical Records and the one that provides for a special pension regime for brigade members.
