Breathe
By Laura Brugés
The first period of sessions of the current legislature, the LXVI, which began on September 1, has not approved any initiatives coming from the legislators. All approved reforms have emanated from the Executive Branch, both constitutional and legal. Yes, believe it or not, they have all been sent by the previous and current presidencies.
Except for one exception: the so-called "Chair Law", promoted by Movimiento Ciudadano since the LXV Legislature and approved in this Legislature, due to the lack of time in the previous one. But, other than that, the legislative work has been limited to complying with the mandates of the National Palace.
I believe that there is a legislative exhaustion, not to say a decadence in parliamentary work. There is less professionalism in the work, little technique and everything has been reduced to shouting and raising the finger to vote, in many cases without even knowing what is being approved. And this applies to all the parliamentary groups represented.
I do not want to defend them, but I am analyzing: atwhat time can they research, read and become experts, in a matter of a day, in security, housing, labor legislation, justice, economy, telecommunications, environment, regulation and energy? They have approved 18 constitutional changes in less than four months, they had spurts in which they approved two constitutional reforms per week. On average, they approved a little more than one constitutional reform per week, only between September and December. There is no human power that can withstand that pace!
Neither Morena nor the opposition have time to prepare, so the debates in the tribune become sterile and bottomless. The only thing that stands out is what is entertaining or scandalous, so that the media have something flashy and circus-like to include in our articles. Nor should we be surprised to see a congresswoman turning her seat into a stall in the middle of the session hall, who was selling shawls, because the reality is that there is no greater feat they can do to kill time until the moment of the vote.
The debate and approval of initiatives have been reduced to an ideological clash. It does not matter what is being approved; in the end, everything is summarized in phrases alluding to the 4T, López Obrador and Claudia Sheinbaum, or in the repetition of references to the past, mentioning Calderón or García Luna. There is not a day in which, from both sides, accusations of corruption, narco-state or dubbing with reference to some crawling animal are not launched.
As for the opposition, it is demotivated because since the final result of the votes is known in advance due to the fact that Morena and its allies outnumber them, there is not much they can do. They no longer have negotiating power despite having a seat in the Political Coordination Board.
To all this, we must add the way in which they charge the advisors who work for their deputies, some of whom are even poorly paid and whose labor rights are sometimes violated.
Taking stock of the first ordinary period of the LXVI Legislature, a total of 794 initiatives were presented, of which only 19 were attended to. The great majority of these matters were promoted by the Federal Executive. In the Senate, 764 bills were presented and 112 were dealt with, most of which were also submitted by the Executive.
Just this week was published the reform that issues the Federal Antitrust and Economic Competition Law, presented by Deputy Alfonso Ramírez Cuéllar, of Morena, which serves to give a framework to the constitutional reform in matters of organic simplification, after the elimination of autonomous agencies such as the COFECE and the IFT, since by deleting them, just to please the Executive, they left everything up in the air. In any case, the Presidency's Legal Counsel will surely send another initiative along the same lines. But, once again, these are not genuine proposals of the legislator, but reactions to initiatives of the Executive.
