The Senate, almost paralyzed by the succession and the conflict in Morena

Andrea Becerril

Newspaper La Jornada
Sunday December 4, 2022, p. 5

The conflict in Morena and the early presidential succession have almost caused legislative paralysis in the Senate, since with only four sessions remaining, the legislative period will conclude with a strong lag of more than a thousand minutes, 100 appointments and various pending laws, legislators from all over the world agreed. political forces.

Senators Citlalli Hernández Mora and José Narro (Morena) pointed out that since the estrangement between President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and coordinator Ricardo Monreal, legislative work has been frozen and productivity is much lower than in the Chamber of Deputies.

Opposition members, including PAN member Damián Zepeda and PRI member Claudia Anaya, agreed that it has been one of the most unproductive periods of the legislature.

In the first three years, the Senate was the center of national political and legislative debate. We had the chance to reach an agreement and get important reforms, such as the one that gave life to the National Guard, but for about a year and particularly in this period of sessions, that changed radically due to the conflict in the Morena group between the hard wing and Monrealist, who have not managed to overcome and impact on the legislative workZepeda highlighted.

He added that there are more than 100 appointments of magistrates, counselors and members of autonomous bodies that have not been approved, although even the candidates have appeared, because in Morena they do not agree and do not pass because a qualified majority is required.

The other issue that has had an impact, Zepeda added, is the agreement of the coordinators of all the benches to change the days of the session, which were Tuesday and Thursday, to Tuesday and Wednesday, so that legislators can spend more time in their states, but this makes it difficult to work in committees.

He explained that before, Wednesdays were dedicated to discussing issues in the committees, but now they come together with the day of the session, in which there are always parallel events, some cultural, and it is a party, with music that is heard even in the session hall, when the priority should be legislative work.

Narro noted that the work in the Senate has relaxed in all groups due to the advancement of electoral times. “The theme of capsApart from the contradictions that the Monreal coordinator himself has generated, the bench has been half fractured and the Senate has been paralyzed”.

In his opinion, the presidents of the Senate and the Political Coordination Board must, he said, assume their responsibility and seek agreements so that the same thing does not happen in this period, in which reforms that the Supreme Court ordered to carry out will continue to be pending. , such as the General Water Laws and the one that regulates the consumption of marijuana.

However, he asserted, it seems that the interest is in acts for personal display, such as a parliament with young people from the University of Zacatecas, which took place last Friday and seems to correspond more to a pre-campaign strategy.

The PRI member Anaya commented that the labor commissions meet little and many relevant reforms are frozen, although there are exceptions, such as the Labor, Foreign Relations and Health commissions, among others. Attendance at plenary sessions has not been greater than 75 of the 127 current legislators.

In the appearances of cabinet members for the presidential address, in October and November, the plenary hall was almost empty. Some, like the Morenista Armando Guadiana, preferred to go to the World Cup in Qatar.