By Maria Carolina Marcello
BRASILIA (Reuters) – The President of the National Congress and Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG), said this Friday, in a letter sent to the President of the Chamber, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), that the resumption of the rite of Provisional measures as determined by the Constitution are “imperative” and not an option.
Lira and Pacheco have been involved in an arm-wrestling match over the processing of MPs in recent weeks, a dispute that has paralyzed the analysis of provisional measures issued by the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
“The procedure for processing provisional measures is established by art. 62 of the Federal Constitution”, says the senator in the letter.
“The observance of the said rite is not within the discretionary sphere of the Boards of the Houses of the National Congress, rather, it is a constitutional imperative whose removal can only take place in extremely exceptional situations, such as occurred with the advent of the Public Health Emergency of National importance resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic”, argued the president of Congress.
Pacheco’s letter was edited in response to another letter sent by Lira last week, asking the senator to take the discussion to the plenary of Congress.
The Constitution determines the formation of a joint commission, composed of an equal number of deputies and senators, which produces an opinion to be forwarded to the plenary of the Chamber, and then to the Senate.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and agglomeration restrictions, Congress created a remote voting system and adopted a special procedure for MPs, eliminating the need for a mixed committee. The measures were forwarded directly to the plenary of the Chamber.
In a meeting with Pacheco this week, Lira defended, for example, a change in the composition of the joint commissions, determining the number of deputies and senators based on a criterion of proportionality. One of the ideas is to have three deputies for every senator on the collegiate.
Another discussion put on the table concerns the setting of deadlines for processing MPs. One of the main complaints from senators is the fact that the measures reach the House on a date very close to the expiry date.
The tight deadline prevents, in practice, the Senate from exercising its prerogative and eventually promoting changes in the MP, since any change would force a return of the proposal to the Chamber and could lead to the expiry of the measure.
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