Senate installed for 66th legislature; Morena, majority force

Andrea Becerril and Georgina Saldierna

The newspaper La Jornada
Friday, August 30, 2024, p. 8

The Senate was convened yesterday for the 66th legislature, with Morena and its allies as the majority force, occupying almost two thirds of the session hall and a decimated opposition, which fears that the guindas will obtain the vote they lack to have the qualified majority required for the approval of the judicial reform and the other initiatives that make up President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s plan C.

Among the new senators are controversial figures, such as the leaders of the PRI and the PAN, Alejandro Moreno Cárdenas, and Marko Cortés, but also legislators who will have to leave their seats in a month, such as Marcelo Ebrard, Omar García Harfuch, Ernestina Godoy and Citlalli Hernández, who on October 1 will join the cabinet of the president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, but hope to vote on the judicial reform before then.

Governance

The session began with the installation of the Deans’ Table, chaired by PRI member Manlio Fabio Beltrones, who swore in the 128 senators who make up the new legislature.

The coordinator of Morena, Adán Augusto López Hernández, then presented the proposal for the integration of the board of directors that will be in office in the first year, with a plural composition, he said, governability of that Chamber. It is headed, he explained, by Gerardo Fernández Noroña, and as vice presidents, the PAN member Mauricio Vila, former governor of Yucatán; the Morena member Imelda Castro and the PRI senator Karla Guadalupe Zamora.

Likewise, the senator of Morena, PVEM and PT, Verónica Noemí Camino, Jasmine Bugarín and Lizeth Sánchez, will be secretaries of the board of directors, and Luis Donaldo Colosio, of MC, will be secretary.

Despite the almost absolute majority of Morena and its allies, the coordinator of the guindas, Adán Augusto López, had to act earlier so that the other political forces would accept the proposal, given the initial objections of the PAN.

In the end, Fernández Noroña was elected president of the board of directors with 127 votes in favor and one against, from PAN member Lilly Téllez.

The ballot was voted on by ballot. The now Morena member Javier Corral Jurado, who was in the spotlight very early yesterday due to the presence of agents from the Chihuahua prosecutor’s office, who delivered a copy of the arrest warrant against him to the Senate’s official records, and the national leader of the PAN, Marko Cortés, brought their votes to the ballot box almost at the same time, but did not even look at each other.

What happened

However, despite the fact that PRI leader Alejandro Moreno Cárdenas decided to exclude Beltrones from the tricolor bench, yesterday when Alito crossed the platform towards his seat, he ran into him and greeted him. The same did the coordinator Manuel Añorve, his former collaborator. What happenedhe said smiling, and Manlio Fabio, who was about to go up to preside over the Deans’ Table and was chatting with the PVEM coordinator, even joked with him.

The legislative building was packed and at the end of the constitutive session of the 66th legislature it was impossible to even walk down the halls, as many of the 128 senators were accompanied by their families to take souvenir photos.