They adjourned dangerous session
The Government negotiated with the friendly opposition of Deputies to lift the special session called by the Hacemos-Pichetto Conduction bloc scheduled for this Tuesday.
It could become another defeat for the ruling party
.
The project to be discussed was the replacement of the Teacher Incentive Fund that the Government has repealed.
Education is an activity that involves all parties and social sectors in a transversal manner.
For that reason, the Government delivered everything they asked of it in order to disrupt a new parliamentary Waterloo.
As a pledge of that agreement, which Martín Menem negotiated with Juan Manuel López - head of the Civic Coalition bloc - and Oscar Agost Carreño, secretary of the Hacemos bloc, the ruling party committed to unblocking the activity of the Chamber.
The signal is the call for 10 commissions starting this Monday.
Not integrating the committees has been the Government's tactic to prevent the Chamber from meeting as much as possible
.
In the Senate it did not help, because the opposition forced the session that overturned DNU 70, the only program that the Government has left standing.
In the House of Representatives, the session could become numerous and could become a stage for the benefit of the toughest opposition.
It could even produce lateral defeats, although significant, as happened in the Senate.
In Thursday's session they voted a preference for him to imminently deal with
an odious project of co-participation in the collection of the check tax
, which proposes 50% for the provinces and 50% for the Anses.
A week ago the opposition achieved 126 votes for a session that needed 129.
Pichetto admits the Minibus Law
This is the most important agreement that the Government reached with the friendly opposition, and precedes the meeting that Miguel Pichetto and the leadership of the Hacemos bloc will have this Monday with Guillermo Francos in the Government House.
It is the most important meeting with legislators in the 3 months that the Government has been in office.
Pichetto presides over a bloc with 23 deputies, but which includes legislators of their own political weight, such as Nicolás Massot, Emilio Monzó, Ricardo López Murphy, Florencio Randazzo, Margarita Stolbizer, and legislators who respond to Martín Llaryora from Córdoba.
It also contains the legislators from Elisa Carrió's bloc, among them Maxi Ferraro, Juan Manuel López and Paula Olivetto.
This integration makes the bench one of the axes of legislative life.
You can decide results based on which way you lean
.
Pichetto has finished convincing the ruling party to forget about the megaprojects, and to scrap the DNU and the omnibus law.
They have listened to him and
are now mandating the minibus law
, which is treatable, according to this formation, except in the formula for updating pensions and the increase or decrease in earnings.
Pichetto maintained, until now in vain, this method of sending individual bills that have consensus and that forget to promote tsunamis that lead to nothing.
Carrió supports scrapping
The Government has been defeated in that fight and it has become clear to it that it must admit that everything goes law by law.
On this point, Pichetto agrees with Elisa Carrió, whose deputies make up the Hacemos bloc.
The head of the Coalition understands that many matters contained in the DNU are good and defend the public interest, but that the Government "
must redirect its treatment through constitutional means
."
He dedicated meetings over the weekend to instructing his deputies on the need to provide legal security for Government projects.
Justice, he affirms, "
is going to dictate the unconstitutionality of the DNU because it was dictated with Congress in extraordinary sessions. If it had not been like that, it could be discussed. But any judge is going to turn it around. He has a way out: channel everything within constitutionality Republican
."
The American dream
The adjournment of the special session does not offend the opposition much either.
It could be repeated that they do not reach 129 votes, as happened in the session on retirements.
This week there is a significant absence of legislators.
Many have traveled to meetings in the United States, split between the East Coast and the West Coast.
They are summoned by a conference by the RAP group, an NGO that promotes good political practices, and which brought legislators, governors and government officials to Stanford University.
The Business Schools have prepared
a seminar there for them on how they see it
, in which, among others, "Condy" (Condoleezza) Rice, Bush Jr.'s former Secretary of State, and Francis Fukuyama, the man who sang the end of the history.
The Argentines who were invited will be thoroughly interrogated, bribed as they say in the movies, in the city of Palo Alto (California) about the Argentine experiment.
One of the Government men who traveled is the G20 "sherpa" Federico Pinedo.
The list includes 35 top businessmen and legislators.
Another group went to the East Coast, accepting an invitation from AmCham, a classic election-year routine in the United States.
They will be received by Biden administration officials, interested in knowing how they view it.
The ten commissions open
With so many absent it was better to cancel the convocation in Congress.
In exchange, some blocks managed to impose names on some important commissions
.
Macrista Alejandro Finocchiaro will be the head of the Education Commission.
The PRO invoiced their refusal to attend the suspended session, arguing that they never believed in the FONID (Teaching Incentive Fund) as a financing method.
They believe that education should be paid for by the provinces and that extending the FONID over time does not help clean up the accounts.
Ricardo López Murphy, from the Hacemos block, will be vice president of the Defense Commission.
The economist was minister of the area at the time and is one of the legislators who best knows the cryptic galaxy of those in uniform.
The commissions that will be activated this week – on Wednesday – are Education, Housing, Culture, Work, Addictions and Drug Trafficking.
On Thursday they open Family, Women, Defense, Regional Economies and Internal Security.
The absence of legislators also slowed down an incipient Peronist project to build
a request for a special session to try to overturn the DNU
, repeating what they already achieved in the Senate.
Martín Menem also took care of that in talks with the head of the block Germán Martínez.
Without a special session with the FONID, attention is focused on the attempt to overthrow DNU 70. This Tuesday there is a meeting of the Unión por la Patria bloc to activate the accession barometer.
It is difficult for it to happen because after the Senate,
Menem would cut his hand
before calling a session on the DNU.
"Let Lousteau now take it"
After the meeting of the UCR block on Friday at the Government House with Guillermo Francos, one of the visitors joked: "Let's see if
they tone it down with the digital lynching of Lousteau
."
Santiago Caputo responded: "
Now let him have it
."
The fear of the ruling party is that Lousteau will have a burst of anger and will now stand as the promoter in Deputies of the repeal of the DNU.
If he wants to break forward by doubling down, he would be acting like an ambitious leader.
He would become an opposition leader who would drag the party towards more confrontational positions.
The opposite of what the sector that De Loredo represents in Deputies does (another absentee this week so as not to miss a date with the empire in Silicon Valley).
If Lousteau moved towards such a position, he would dislodge the sector encouraged by the governors, who issued a statement distancing themselves from his no-positive vote.
Among them is Carlos Sadir from Jujuy, a man who has been Gerardo Morales, Lousteau's partner in the assembly of the current leadership of the UCR and who consented last year to the division of the bloc.
“Save, huh…”
Victoria Villarruel did not err or conspire by granting the debate that ended with DNU 70 in the Senate.
She protected
the stability of the votes that gave her the powers to control the chamber and build the commissions last December
.
With 45 votes in favor of sharing the check tax, the ruling party was two votes away from 2/3.
With that number -47- the opposition could revoke that mandate at any time and take away the powers that allow the ruling party, with a minority of seats, to manage the house.
This dialogue with many between the lines proves it.
It happened in Thursday's session between two people who think very differently, but who see it.
-Mayans: "Two votes were missing to have two thirds."
-Villarruel: "Exactly. We required 47."
-Mayans: "But, well, what are you going to do? That's democracy."
-Villarruel: "Life."
-Mayans: "Life. (Laughter.) But there were only two votes missing for the two-thirds. Save, eh... (Laughter.)"
Fantasies about the vice president's misconduct contain little understanding of the rigors of politics.
The Senate session was a game in which everyone won, except the Government.
Peronism achieved the call and gathered the votes.
Lousteau became a hero for a day.
The radical governors, although they grumbled in a newsletter, also won because now they are worth more for any need of the Government in Deputies.
The block of “Los 39” put together by Juan Carlos Romero saved the stoppage, which could have been endangered if Villarruel did not call the session.
Lousteau's libido
You should never make Peronist readings of radicalism or radical readings of Peronism, it is the classic error of cabotage opinionators.
Lousteau
focused his libido on his main fight, which is against the Macri-Milei pact
that cousin Jorge represents in CABA.
He has to renew the senator's seat in 2025 and retains the district's electorate with this vote.
The no positive vote of the president of radicalism does not divide the party.
He was already divided.
He took office with a tribal agreement that produced a historic schism: he created two UCR blocks in Deputies.
One was chaired by Mario Negri and the other by Rodrigo de Loredo.
Lousteau's position, beyond the background, is
a consequence of the divisions that he has not mended during his short tenure as president of the National Committee
.
The Government summoned the UCR block to the Government House hours after the session.
It was the first reaction when he saw that there were conflicting opinions among the radicals.
That call was achieved by Lousteau, who now placed himself in a critical position for his role as president of the party.
He believed that the DNU was unconstitutional, something that all his co-religionists shared.
He voted differently than the governors of his party and his block.
Faced with the same situation, Maxi Abad, president of the UCR of the province of Buenos Aires, abstained, to support an idea and protect the unity of his troops.
La Rosada, family property
Lousteau's position accumulated thousands of signatures over the weekend from party leaders, under the motto:
I may or may not like Lousteau, but what he did is right
.
For his critics, he made a decision that does not understand the interests of the leaders who have to administer, and who need a good relationship with the Government.
But he expresses the opinion of radicalism about Milei.
As a veteran party leader said, the president's attitudes, such as supporting the fiscal rebellion of José Luis Espert, prove that Milei is not a person with the conditions to delegate functions to him.
"
If it continues like this," he joked, "we will have to declare the Government House as a family asset so that it is not liquidated
."
Former radical senator José García Arecha estimated that radicalism has been dragged from the Malbec bloc as it is a Talacasto group – a confession of seniority when mentioning that brand.
The Malbec group was born in the 2023 Harvest in the middle of the campaign, and united the radicals summoned by Alfredo Cornejo behind Patricia Bullrich.
Cornejo is an advocate for a better relationship with the Government.
In 2007 when he supported the Cristina-Cobos agreement, he argued that if radicalism did not join that alliance he would miss the train of history.
Today he does the same with Milei.