Twenty days ago, the regular session was opened and the Congress had not yet formed the committees. “It's something unprecedented,” says an experienced Peronist MP. Only Budget and Finance were set up in the Lower House to deal with the debt refinancing agreement with the International Monetary Fund. The ruling party was fractured and has no majority or quorum. This chess of dissonance obstructs the integration of commissions, a key tool to re-session.
On Wednesday afternoon, Germán Martínez, head of the Frente de Todos bench, called for a meeting the presidents of the Juntos por el Cambio blocs. The reason for the conclave, which took place on the third floor of the Congress, was to discuss the division of committee presidencies into Deputies. For the last elections, both major blocs have equal amounts of commissions and that generates tensions. “Many bills have already entered and they are paralyzed because committees cannot be formed,” says a deputy from radicalism.
The meeting between the blocks ended without a concrete agreement, so they will have to meet again. In the ruling party they say that they want to “arrange as soon as possible to start meeting”, and they emphasize: “Until they agree with the opposition, we cannot define who will preside over the committees.”
Martínez thinks that the opposition has to give in and in JxC they attribute the obstacle to the fracture in the ruling party. “The big problem we have is to agree with each other,” an FdT deputy acknowledged Infobae. “This is a mess and you have to thread to get commissions,” he emphasizes.
The ruling party is a single block of 118 deputies and Together for Change is an interblock with a coalition of blocs that, together, reach 116 seats. If D'Hont was applied to the distribution of commissions by blocks, the ruling party would control the majority. On the other hand, if the distribution is done by interblocks, the Government will lose key places. In the opposition, they demand that the committees must be made up of interblocks, with the precedent that was left in December when the Budget Committee was set up.
The economy, priority on the legislative agenda
The Government intends that Martínez and Massa achieve the appropriate balance in order to implement their parliamentary agenda. Among the issues promoted by the Executive are projects of automotive investment, electromobility, the Argentine Buy Law and the Industrial Bio Agriculture. “A package of measures for economic reactivation is coming, that will be the bloc's priority,” he predicts in the ruling party.
The head of state wants the Congress to drive a set of issues on which the Economic and Social Council, chaired by Gustavo Béliz, works. Cecilia Todesca and Matías Kulfas are the officials close to Fernández who articulate the design of these measures. But it won't be easy, because the nuances in the government coalition go beyond the agreement with the IMF: from La Campora there were “objections” to some projects promoted by the Council. “Máximo warned that those from Productive Development do not come out,” they warn in the office of a legislator close to the president, regarding some initiatives by Kulfas.
In line with the Balcarce 50, the economic team of Sergio Massa, president of Deputies, works on parliamentary initiatives to “generate work and added value”, they explain. Fernández needs the doll of the leader of the Renewal Front to legislate. Massa has daily dialogue channels with Maximo and with the opposition. One issue that is given priority in massism is the extension of the incentive regime for construction, which allows money-laundering in this sector. The project is signed by Massa and Cristian Ritondo, head of the PRO block, and the novelty for this year is that they are considering including used properties in the tax benefits, “to the extent that they are allocated to each room for 10 years”.
Between Falcons and Pigeons
Among JxC's preferences in the Lower House, institutional and economic initiatives are highlighted, linked to tax exemptions and measures to contain the rise in prices. In this regard, in Radical Evolution they anticipated that Deputy Martín Tetaz is working on an anti-inflation bill that they hope to discuss in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, the PRO places emphasis on stopping the projects that promote the increase in taxes and the reform of the Council of the Judiciary, pending last year.
“A difficult Congress is coming and Cristina still hasn't answered any message to Alberto,” admits a friend of the president.