translated from Spanish: Congress makes Chadwick’s institutional agenda a good time back

“It is in Parliament that it is legislated and voted on; let’s not keep going long.” The phrase of the President of the Chamber of Deputies Iván Flores (DC) in the public account before the Plenary Congress, to President Sebastián Piñera and his ministers of the political team was a call for attention from the Legislative Power to the strategy of the Executive to seek “institutional agreements” outside Congress.
The flower dart points directly to the round of hearings and efforts led by Interior Minister Andrés Chadwick, to whom President Sebastián Piñera, entrusted this task. In Congress they look with suspicion at these moves of the chief of staff and this is not the first time that since the leaders of the Legislative Power raise the voice regarding this “kitchen” that has been launched by the Executive. As of last June, Flores himself was upset to learn through the press of the changes that Minister Chadwick has in place for the Legislative Power as part of the national agreement to improve the quality of politics and institutions. Meanwhile, his Senate peer, Jaime Quintana (PPD) said at that time that “the Government invites us to the photo, but it is inclined towards the strategy of taxation and not dialogue because it does not listen or accept our proposals”.
“Time is passing”
Thus, the Public Account was a new opportunity for Congress to put the points on the issues in this area. Taking advantage of the testera, Flores warned that “they are good commissions, yes; consultations, yes; but, we can’t just go through that. We must take advantage of the limited space we have left and Congress is the privileged space for dialogue and agreements.”
“Parliament is the institutional place for political-legislative agreements and democracy has no shortcuts in it. Parliament is not the end of the road… but it is the shared path from start to finish, which is not reached by preconceived agreements,” he stressed, adding that the conditions for political agreements are that dialogue is institutional; clear and broad; substantial and non-cosmetic; in addition to timely, realistic and feasible.
Flores also called for a hurry with the concreteness of the agreements. “What is probably not achieved in the next two semesters will not be achieved in the next three months without facing further difficulties and in the midst of a political electoral climate surely more tense than the current one,” said the House holder.
Flores assumed that “almost half of the second year of the government’s exercise and the parliamentary term, the legislative results in the areas considered as priorities by the Executive itself and mainly by the citizens, do not yet show results practical.”
“We are letting the best time available from this administration, and this is not good for anyone, you can’t leave us happy. There are important decisions to be made and, in a nutshell, we have to recognize that we are late, but we still have the opportunity to catch up. Time is shortened and from there our press, he said, noting that Members are available to move quickly on issues where citizens require quick and effective responses to their demands.
In the final part of his office, Flores urged the Government “to concentrate and advocate the legislative processing of its reforms, bluntly and without further sucedraneal commissions, with breadth and strength… substantive priority over the accessory or media.”
For its part, Quintana also called on the Government to “properly analyze and collect the proposals that the various sectors have presented to it in the field of institutional strengthening”.
But he also put concrete lawsuits on the table, such as a New Constitution and an acidic criticism of the Constitutional Court, an issue that Just Chadwick’s agenda has no folder in it. “Chile has two cameras, not three. Reform of the TC is urgently needed to ensure respect for legislative process and democracy,” he said.
No to the reduction of parliamentarians
But that was not the only call out of attention from the Legislative Branch to the government. Both house presidents also expressed their resounding rejection of President Sebastián Piñera’s proposal to reduce the number of parliamentarians.
Quintana stated that “to return to the binominal logic of the transition is to go backwards.”   “Reducing the number of its members (of Congress) is not an accurate way to address the problem or improve the levels of trust towards the Legislative Power. This has been said by most benches, academia and various studies on politics and governance,” he said.
He also made a comparison, noting that “each Chilean congressman represents approximately 86,000 people. In the Nordic countries, on the other hand, each parliamentarian represents an average of about 25 thousand inhabitants.”
For his part, Mr Flores argued that “this House reflects Chile’s rich human and political diversity. Here and in the districts we build the same country every day from its diversity and that can’t be priced.”
And in a clear message to the Government, he noted that “we can improve our efficiency and effectiveness, without losing diversity or representativeness, just by diminishing parliamentarians as proposed by the Executive.”
However, the Government is unwilling to give in on this matter. Minister Cecilia Pérez said that constitutional reform will be presented “with a sense of urgency” and argued that “we have a difference without a doubt, and it is a profound difference, and that is that we do not share that the current number of parliamentarians serves to to carry out an efficient job as the citizen requires and therefore we will persevere in our own project to reduce the number of parliamentarians, both mPs and senators.”

Original source in Spanish

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