What will the ruling party do on the last day with a majority in the Senate? / Argentina News

The Senate authorities are preparing a session for the December 9 to take the oath of elected senators in legislative elections and deal with an extensive agenda of issues, including 116 decrees by President Alberto Fernández that the Frente de Todos block wants to validate before losing the majority it currently holds.

The Senate has not been in session since before the legislative elections and, although there is currently no formal convocation, parliamentary sources confirmed to NA that the decision to reconvene the plenary session one day before the current composition changes was taken last. Thursday, during a meeting of the ruling bloc led by Vice President Cristina Kirchner.

The need to hold at least one more session before the replacement had been previously discussed between the head of the Frente de Todos bench, José Mayans, and his peer from the Juntos por el Cambio interblock, Luis Naidenoff: It was expected for next week but it was postponed to unify it with the swearing in of the elected senators, who will formally take office on December 10.

That will be the first particularity of the session, since the regulation establishes that the swearing in of the elected senators takes place on November 29, but the change in the dates of the legislative elections this year due to the pandemic led to postponement of some days that ceremony.

Last day with official majority

The second peculiarity is that the session will take place on the last day with a pro-government majority, which will be used by the Frente de Todos to give parliamentary endorsement in a single process to 116 Executive Power decrees whose approval was delayed by the election campaign.

The decrees are on very diverse subjects: among them there are several budgetary extensions ordered by the Government; the increase of the non-taxable minimum of the Income Tax; the extension of the ban on dismissals; the repeal of a measure of the previous management regarding Migration; pension increases and isolation measures due to the pandemic.

By law, the decrees of the Executive Power have to be approved by one of the two houses of Congress to be fully valid and, since the beginning of the Fernández government, this procedure has always been carried out in the Senate by the comfortable majority of the ruling party that allowed it to Cristina Kirchner to handle the times and the forms.

That majority will cease to be such on December 10, when the official bloc will go from having 41 senators to 35, two fewer than necessary to open a session, while the main opposition bench will grow from the 26 seats it has today to 31 .

116 decrees in one package

The Senate has not been in session since before the legislative elections

For this reason, the Frente de Todos rushed the treatment of the 116 decrees in a single package in the Bicameral Commission of Parliamentary Procedure last week, in order to leave them ready for approval in the Senate.

The Together for Change bloc withdrew from that meeting after stating its refusal to deal with all the decrees in “an express procedure“and” jointly, “as Naidenoff and PRO deputy Pablo Tonelli put it.

In this way, the main opposition group anticipated its position against the attempt by the Frente de Todos to approve them before the legislative change, which was questioned by the ruling party considering that the reaction is a political move.

In that context, the block of senators of the ruling party will seek to assert its majority on the last day to avoid eventual inconveniences when the numbers of the enclosure are modified.

In addition, the session is expected to incorporate numerous projects requested by some of the senators who say goodbye to the upper house, both from the ruling party and the opposition, which is why they spent the last week meeting the commissions to give them an opinion and leave them ready for approval.