After delaying the decision until the last minute, Vice President
Victoria Villarruel
finally did not call the special session that Unión por la Patria had requested for this Thursday to reject Javier Milei's mega DNU on the premises.
"That does not mean that he will not call shortly, it is the power of the presidency to do so and when he does so it will be in a timely manner," they said from the Villarruel entourage late Wednesday night.
The Frente de Todos is already organizing a press conference for this Thursday to denounce its actions.
"It violates the Constitution, the regulations and law 27,122, which regulates the treatment of the DNU," they say.
"The vice president is a representative of the Executive who must be impartial. She is not just another senator; if a group of legislators asks her for a session, all she has to do is guarantee it," the bench complains.
The Senate regulations establish that when five senators request a special session, the presidency will arrange for the day and time it deems best.
That is, not necessarily this Thursday as the FdT requested.
He kicked the problem but at some point he will have to set a date.
The truth is that Villarruel met with representatives of the PRO and the UCR and from that meeting the decision arose not to convene,
an unnecessary risk, which would also expose his allies
.
In the radical caucus, for example, there were several senators who criticized the decree and considered it unconstitutional.
That is why the UCR had given the Executive different options to deal with it: to divide it into different decrees, to present it as a mirror law - Senator Carolina Losada presented it that way - and they had even suggested changing the DNU law to that can be approved or rejected in parts.
"According to the regulations, the presidency can call when it deems appropriate, as Cristina Kirchner did. It is the same regulation and every time we asked for a special session, she did not call it or she did it when it occurred to her," recalls a PRO legislator.
Other representatives, including the PRO, also warned him that
the DNU is a time bomb and that it is necessary to deal with it before Kirchnerism obtains a quorum to reject it.
There are even issues that are crossed and contradict the Omnibus Law.
The Frente de Todos has 33 legislators and needs four more to reach a quorum.
They are not far away.
Federal officials Edgardo Kueider and Carlos "Camau" Espínola had already indicated that it is unconstitutional.
They would also have the senator from Río Negro Mónica Silva.
The path that a decree of necessity and urgency must follow is detailed in a law that was created specifically for that purpose.
Milei's mega DNU - which repeals or modifies more than 300 laws - entered Congress on January 5 and the deadline to discuss it in the Bicameral Legislative Procedure expired on January 19.
But that commission not only did not deal with it but it is not yet formed.
If it does not do so, the norm is that any of the chambers can vote on it directly on the premises for its acceptance or rejection.
As Clarín said, this commission must be made up of 8 deputies and 8 senators.
Villarruel has already appointed the representatives of the Upper House.
But in the Deputies, the president of the Chamber, Martín Menem, did not do so and is taking refuge in the open dispute with the Frente de Todos over the number of members that correspond to him.
The reality is that La Libertad Avanza is in no hurry to deal with the DNU because as long as it is not rejected it continues running.
It is true that the judicial protections block some specific points, such as the labor reforms, but the bulk of the decree is still in progress.
Furthermore, a Government source acknowledges that the Executive believes that the demands that are accumulating in the courts will continue to escalate to the Supreme Court and they are betting that in March, the highest court will rule in their favor.