The preparatory session in which the ruling party sought to re-elect Cecilia Moreau as head of the Chamber of Deputies failed due to lack of quorum but The deputy of the Frente de Todos (FdT) will continue to lead the body in any case until new authorities are elected.
The ruling party was only able to gather 122 of the 129 legislators necessary to enable the debate, since Together for Change (JxC) had announced that it would not go down to the session in rejection of the resolution of the Presidency of the Chamber that suspended the appointment of the members of the body in the Council of the Magistracy.
The FdT brought together 122 legislators accompanied by four allies from the United Provinces interbloc and Rolando Figueroa from Neuquén.
After half an hour of delay, the person in charge of adjourning the session -once the regulatory term had expired- was the deputy Carlos Heller, who presided over the plenary for being the oldest legislator, who announced that the authorities headed by Moreau will continue in their functions until a new session is made.
In this way, Heller made reference to article 37 of the regulations of the lower house, with which the first vice president, Omar De Marchi (PRO); the second, José Luis Gioja (FdT) and the third Julio Cobos (UCR) until new authorities are elected.
Likewise, the General Secretary, currently held by Juan Manuel Cheppi, will continue in their posts; the Parliamentarian, in the hands of Eduardo Cergnul; the Administrative Secretary, in charge of Rodrigo Rodríguez.
Article 37 of the regulations of the Chamber of Deputies states that “the president and vice-presidents appointed in accordance with article 2 will remain in office for one year.” “If the term has expired and they have not been replaced in accordance with the provisions of the same article, they will continue in the performance of their functions until this is done. In the event that the president ends his term as a deputy, he will be replaced in the performance of his duties by the replacements indicated in the following article,” it adds.
Moreau’s word after the session
At the end of the session, Moreau -together with the legislators of the ruling party- offered a press conference in the Salón de los Pasos Perdidos, in which he ratified his decision to appeal the ruling of Judge Martin Cormick that prevented the radical deputy from Roxana Reyes assume a seat in the Council of the Magistracy and resolved to suspend all the appointments made recently, with the argument of safeguarding the powers of the institution that presides over.
“My role is, was and will be to guarantee the presence of the four magistracy advisers, for which we appeal the judge’s decision with conviction. For me there are no good misses and bad misses according to the convenience of the moment,” Moreau said.
And he added: “I want to say that beyond today’s Legislative Assembly, whoever speaks to them was never moved by the charges, but by convictions and political militancy.”
“We are going to continue working to respect the autonomy of this House in terms of its decisions and that it is not violated by anything or anyone,” Moreau insisted. and added: “The political parties must walk the path of building a new democratic pact where the institutions are free. As a political militant I am not going to put up with mistreatment anymore.”
For his part, the head of the official bench, Germán Martínez, expressed his “absolute repudiation” of the attitude of JxC and other political blocs of not giving a quorum to carry out the preparatory session in which Cecilia Moreau had to be ratified as president of the Chamber and considered that “there is a clear maneuver to hinder the functioning” of the body.
“It is of enormous institutional gravity. It is an unprecedented political and institutional event,” asserted Germán Martínez and added: “Here there is a clear maneuver to hinder the functioning of the Chamber of Deputies.”
Cecilia Moreau: “The charges never moved me, but the convictions”
The president of the Chamber of Deputies affirmed that she was never “moved by the charges, but by convictions and political militancy”, in her opinion about the failure of the preparatory session in which the authorities of that parliamentary body were going to be renewed for 2023.
Moreau formulated these expressions in a conference that he gave together with the president of the bloc of FdT deputies, Germán Martínez, and legislators from the ruling bloc.
“I want to say that beyond today’s session, the person who is speaking was never moved by the charges, but by convictions and political militancy,” referring to the lack of a quorum to renew the authorities in which she was going to be reelected.
“We are going to work to respect the autonomy” of the parliamentary body, Moreau said at the press conference, when defending his decision to appeal Judge Martín Cormick’s ruling on the Judicial Council and suspending the resolution in which the four members of the tripartite body were appointed.
“The division of powers is one of the supreme factors that make the Republic work. My role is, was and will be to guarantee the presence of the four magistracy advisers, for which we appeal the judge’s decision with conviction. For me there are no good failures and bad failures according to the convenience of the moment,” he added.
Meanwhile, he stressed: “We are going to continue working to respect the autonomy of this Chamber in terms of its decisions and that it is not violated by anything or anyone.”
Finally, Moreau asserted that “The political parties must follow the path of building a new democratic pact where the institutions are free.”
The position of Together for Change
Meanwhile, the JxC referents also offered a press conference in Pasos Perdidos to ratify their decision not to give a quorum and reject Moreau’s decision to suspend the appointments in the Council of the Magistracy.
“We are facing an event of enormous institutional gravity that has never occurred in this Chamber,” warned the head of the block of UCR deputies, Mario Negriand considered that Moreau “has decided not to represent the Corps or defend the Corps, but to join Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s strategy, which is to paralyze the institutions, the Judicial Council and run over Justice.”
With different arguments, the Federal interblock, in the voice of Alejandro ‘Topo’ Rodríguez from Buenos Aires, announced that he would not go down to the premises to provide a quorum for the ratification of Moreau at the head of the body but asked the ruling party and the opposition to debate issues of interest to society and agree to meet, noting that in that space they are “fed up with the fact that the Frente de Todos y Juntos por el Cambio continue to prosecute politics.”
“The work of Congress must focus on the major issues that today anguish and worry Argentine society,” Rodríguez asserted, considering that “the laws that we have proposed to improve productive investment and create productive work in Argentina must be approved. “.
Along the same lines, the Left Front had announced: “We are not going to give a quorum to elect the authorities of the Chamber. It is a thread alien to the interests of the workers, in a Chamber that meets almost exclusively at the request of the IMF”.
In the session, the ruling party wanted Moreau to be re-elected until December 2023 as president of the Chamber of Deputies.
Cecilia Moreau was elected on August 2, replacing Sergio Massa, who took office at the head of the National Ministry of Economy on that date.
Germán Martínez: “There is a clear maneuver to hinder the functioning of the Chamber”
The head of the bench of the Frente de Todos (FdT) in the Chamber of Deputies, Germán Martínez, expressed his “absolute repudiation” of the attitude of Together for Change (JxC) and other political blocs of not giving a quorum to hold the preparatory session in which Cecilia Moreau had to be ratified as president of the Chamber and considered that “there is a clear maneuver to hinder the functioning” of the body.
Martínez formulated these concepts in a conference that he gave, together with Moreau, Leandro Santoro and the deputies Vanesa Siley and Rodolfo Tailhade, appointed to the Council of the Magistracy.
“We came to this preparatory session with the firm intention of not only ratifying the leadership leadership of this Chamber of Deputies, but very especially we came to propose the continuity of our colleague Cecilia Moreau at the head of leadership” of the legislative body, Martínez said at the Press conference.
“We want to express our absolute repudiation of the attitude taken by Together for Change and other political blocs that decided to prevent the Chamber of Deputies today from establishing the necessary quorum so that we can continue the scheme of authorities that our Honorable Chamber already has.” he assured.
For the deputy, “It is an enormous institutional gravity, it is an unprecedented political/institutional fact” and added: “It seems to me that we have to make things clear. Here there has been a clear maneuver to hinder, to hinder, to prevent the functioning of the Chamber of Deputies.”
In this context, he added: “We come to unconditionally support the decisions made by the president of the Chamber of Deputies on Wednesday regarding the appeal of the ruling of the federal contentious administrative court number 11. It is a ruling that makes rise to a proposal that I made on behalf of my block and also to the resolution that suspended the appointments of Deputies to the Council of the Magistracy”.
He also pointed out that Moreau made that decision “not thinking of petty, sectoral or block interests” but “claiming the autonomy of the blocks and parliamentary bodies to carry out their decisions and instead of making specific decisions what he raised was the possibility of suspending the appointments in the Council of the Magistracy based on the resolution issued in a timely manner”.
“They are irreproachable decisions from the legal point of view and with a wisdom and prudence that we as a bloc want to vindicate,” he added.
For his part, Moreau ratified his decision to appeal Judge Martín Cormick’s ruling on the Judicial Council “to defend the autonomy of the chamber” and said that “there are no good or bad rulings.”
“For me there are no good rulings, nor bad rulings. There are no rulings according to the convenience of the moment, with which the judge’s decision was appealed by this chamber with the total conviction of defending autonomy and doing what we had to do. Let’s go to continue working to defend the autonomy of this chamber and that its decisions are not violated,” Moreau said at the press conference he offered with the rest of the members of the official party.
In this sense, the deputy said that “political parties must walk the path of building a new democratic pact, where institutions are free and political parties must act accordingly.”
