The National Government intends that in the coming days, before the legislative change that will take place on December 10, in the National Congress 116 Necessity and Urgency Decrees are validated, which include, among other issues, budget expansions, the use of IMF working funds and labor reform. All these decrees should begin to be discussed this Thursday in the Bicameral Legislative Procedure Commission.
The call to discuss these initiatives was announced by the deputy of the Frente de Todos, Marcos Cleri, a few hours after knowing the result of Sunday’s midterm elections, in which Together for Change prevailed over the ruling party by almost 9 points at the national level. The immediate reaction of the main opposition interblock was to issue a statement in which they called for a consensus on the agenda to be addressed and denounced that the Government wants “To dictate an agenda that is completely distant from the priorities of the Argentines and, in the case of the DNU, the ratification without debate of all the unconsulted decisions taken by the Government during the pandemic”.
In that letter, signed by the presidents of the Radical Civic Union blocs, Mario Negri, from PRO, Cristian Ritondo, and the Civic Coalition, Juan Manuel Lopez, The need to discuss “a work agenda in Congress” was pointed out that “cannot exclude priority and urgent issues such as the economy, production, education and security”. “We want a Congress that deals with the problems of Argentines, that was the message and the mandate that we received from the polls and that we will enforce,” they added.
The fear in the Together for Change coalition is that there is An attempt for these initiatives to quickly reach the Senate, where thanks to the majority that the ruling party in that room has always validated the decrees sent by the Executive in his almost two years of mandate.
The opposition also maintained that the Friday before the elections the ruling party had proposed the treatment in different commissions, during this Tuesday and Wednesday, of projects on the management of disused tires, the sanction of a packaging law, the regulation of production of medicinal cannabis, community kitchens and other merely declarative ones such as “the institution of the Day of Maternal Love or Sign Language” and that they had not been consulted either.
In the Frente de Todos, on the other hand, they affirmed that everything that was sent on Friday to be analyzed between Tuesday and Wednesday in the commissions of Natural Resources, Justice, General Legislation, Mercosur, Social Action, Agriculture and Livestock, Budget and Tourism previously agreed.
From the opposition interblock they highlighted that there are more relevant laws that should be discussed more urgently. “To put these laws into treatment, they summon the General Legislation, Natural Resources, Health, Agriculture and Budget commissions, commissions in which we have requested through art. 109 of the HCDN regulations the urgent treatment of such relevant issues as the rental law, the extinction of ownership of illicit goods, the VAT exemption for the basic food basket, the mental health program for children and adolescents and the treatment of the Budget National 2022, that since September 15, when it was presented by the Executive Power, the ruling party in the Chamber refuses to debate “, remarked another paragraph of the statement.
“Yesterday afternoon, after 2 out of 3 Argentines told the government at the polls that it should rectify the course and that Together for Change achieve victory in 6 of the 8 provinces that elected senators, the ruling party called for the Bicameral Legislative Procedure Commission so that before the majority in the Senate changes, 116 decrees of urgent need be dispatched, ”they completed in the statement.
The opposition position only adds tension to the link between the ruling party and the opposition. President Alberto Fernández announced on Sunday that he will send a bill to Congress so that, with majority support, the terms of an agreement with the IMF for the renegotiation of the foreign debt can be negotiated.
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