After more than four months and in the midst of the controversy generated by the decision of Kirchnerism to impose an agenda that combines projects requested by the ruling party and the opposition, the Senate returns to session this Thursday with the axis of the laws that the province of Santa Fe to combat drug violence.
The session began after 12:15 p.m. with the presence of 70 legislators, including representatives of the Frente de Todos, Juntos por el Cambio, and Unidad Federal.
At the start of the debate, Senator Marcelo Lewandowski (FdT) requested the treatment on tables of the project to Strengthen the Federal Justice of Santa Fe, which obtained the half sanction of Deputies last Tuesday.
Then Alfredo Cornejo from Mendoza, as president of the Juntos interblock, requested a motion of order to deal first with the issues requested by the opposition through two special session requests and that the other issues be dealt with in a session on April 13.
Specifically, Together for Change wants only the specifications of the judges of Santa Fe and Córdoba to be voted on in this Thursday's session together with the so-called Lucio Law and that the rest of the agenda be dealt with on the date proposed for next month .
In turn, José Mayans, president of the National and Popular Front bloc, wanted to impose the agenda set by the ruling party.
"Don't be unfair in saying that we don't want to meet," Mayans reproached the opposition to later make a defense of the vice president.
"Then the legislators from Santa Fe go with the press operation saying that Cristina is preventing the treatment when you refused to hold the session after February 24 (when the high school was held)," he added.
In this context, Mayans remarked: "We maintain that the call made by the presidency is fair and to modify the decree (to call the session) they need two thirds because they have to deviate from the regulations."
For his part, Guillermo Snopek, as president of the Federal Unity bloc, affirmed that "there would have to be three calls for special sessions."
When the provisional president of the Senate, Claudia Ledesma Abdala, who heads the session in the absence of Cristina Kirchner, who has not led a meeting since September 1 of last year, wanted to close the discussion by imposing the agenda of the presidency of the body.
Luis Naidenoff, president of the radical block, asked that Cornejo's motion be voted on.
"This Senate has the quality of crashing the carousel," Naidenoff started to add later: "In parliaments sometimes the numbers change, the majorities and minorities are circumstantial and today the majority requests to alter the order of treatment."
When Ledesma Abdala insisted on voting, the Juntos senators got up from their benches and Cornejo met with Naidenoff, Snopek and Humberto Schiavoni (PRO) to figure out what to do.
After a few minutes and after Cornejo crossed paths with the provisional president, the representatives of the opposition began to leave the premises.
"They care very little if what they say is not done. We are going to continue working to achieve the laws that Argentines are needing," said Mayans.
In principle, the agenda includes the so-called Lucio Law, the Zero Alcohol at the Wheel project and the facilitation of the renewal of the Single Disability Certificate.
The call was made official this Wednesday by the provisional president of the Senate, Claudia Ledesma Abdala de Zamora, who was in charge because Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner remained in charge of the Executive Branch due to President Alberto Fernández's trip to the United States.
The parliamentary meeting was scheduled for today at 12, with an agenda that includes issues requested by the ruling party and the opposition in recent weeks, through three requests for a special session signed by the members of the Federal Unit, Together for Change and the Front of All.
Abdala de Zamora also included on today's agenda issues that, although they had a commission opinion, had not been requested by any bench.
Among the issues that the legislators will have on their desks are the so-called Lucio Law and the facilitation of the renewal of the Single Certificate of Disability, both with the sanction of Deputies;
in addition to the agreements to fill vacancies in the Federal Justice of Santa Fe and Córdoba.
These projects were included in the special session requests made by the different blocks in recent weeks.
Federal Unit, for example, in mid-March had formalized a request for a special session for yesterday (which ultimately was not done) to deal with the Lucio Law -approved by Deputies- and the appointment of judges from the city of Rosario, affected by a string of crimes that are attributed to drug trafficking.
Also, a project by Edgardo Kueider from Entre Ríos to reduce the electricity service rate that, since it does not have a commission opinion, requires two-thirds of the votes to be debated.
The interblock of JxC senators joined with a similar request (without Kueider's project), but for today at 12.
Yesterday, the interblock of the Frente de Todos presented a third request for a special session that included the same topics that the opposition claimed and two issues that were rejected by Juntos and by Federal Unity: the creation of the University of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and the Nursing Promotion and Development project.
Finally, these two projects were not included in the call for a special session signed by the provisional president of the Senate.
During the Parliamentary Labor meeting, chaired by the radical Carolina Losada as vice president of the upper house, since Abdala de Zamora was absent, the opposition senators were reluctant to accept the projects requested by the head of the ruling party, José from Formosa Mayans.
With the departure of four senators who now make up the Federal Unit, the Frente de Todos lost its majority and its own quorum.
According to parliamentary sources, the head of the Juntos por el Cambio interblock, Alfredo Cornejo, and his partner from Federal Unity, Guillermo Snopek, maintained continuous communications throughout the afternoon with the aim of bringing together their 38 legislators (33 from JxC and 5 from UF) and go down to the compound today.
Finally, the three requests for a special session were unified by the provisional president, arguing that "a decision to the contrary would imply a greater representation of some senators over others."
In addition, Abdala de Zamora included issues (which had been reviewed by Deputies) that had not been included in any of the special session requests, such as Zero Breathalyzer, the National Plan for Congenital Cardiopathies, the elimination of the proof of life process for retirees , tax exemptions for health workers and the recognition of sign language as a gestural language throughout Argentina.