So far the legislature has approved six bills; took office last May.
The debates about his self-purification, the crossed death, the Pandora Papers, the price of fuel, the prison crisis and the budget proforma distanced the National Assembly from the legislative agenda that had been raised last June and that included the process of 85 projects to be approved in one year.
In the last two months, the legislature dedicated its time to discussing the dismissal of the second vice president of the Assembly, Bella Jiménez (before the ID), for acts of corruption in the hiring of her work team. Later, the killings of inmates in the Guayaquil jails also meant debate and investigation; Before, the processing of an urgent project that did not pass in the Assembly caused Legislative-Executive distancing and even crossed death threats for new elections.
While one of the issues that took up a month of debates, discussions and confrontation between the Government and the opposition was the so-called Pandora Papers, which is a leak of files that account for the connection of politicians with companies in tax havens.
In June, the President of Parliament, Guadalupe Llori, presented what he called the 2021-2022 Minga Parliamentary Agenda for the Country, which prioritized the needs of the population in terms of attention to the pandemic caused by COVID-19, economic reactivation and employment, rights of peoples and nationalities, protection of the nature, access and qualities of education and fight against corruption.
National Assembly seeks to break paradigms in legislation and intends to pass 85 laws in one year
However, at the moment six projects have been approved on economic reactivation in Manabí and Esmeraldas, reforms to the Law on youth entrepreneurship, on maritime regulation, the Environmental Code, the Law for the Creation of the Amawtay Wasi University and social security.
The first vice president of the legislature, Virgilio Saquicela (BAN), It specifies that the commissions have been dedicated to summoning State authorities and ministers, at all times, and this makes it impossible for project reports to come out on time, and also causes that there are not the necessary inputs so that the plenary session can deal with them. There is an abuse of the power to supervise from the commissions to receive simple information. So far no official who has appeared has faced impeachment, he says.
To this are added, says Saquicela, the exhortations that for him are “a shot in the air”, and that leads the plenary to discussions of four and up to six hours of plenary session, which may well be used for the analysis and approval of the reports of the draft laws at the level of the commissions.
All this makes it impossible to comply with the proposed agenda, six months of management have already elapsed and no laws have been produced; several of those approved have come from the previous legislature, says the authority, who expresses concern about the low production of project reports. The projects are in the commissions and more proposals are coming in every day.
Juan Lloret, from the Union for Hope (UNES) block, On the other hand, he justifies that the political situation has exceeded the legislative agenda, since the priorities in the country are framed in the economic issue, security and political instability generated, according to him, by Pandora’s papers.
The agenda goes to the background when issues such as budget proforma and an urgent law are put into the discussion in which it is intended to give answers to citizens, although it is not known if it will be what people are looking for, but that captures the eye of legislators, he notes.
Lloret indicates that once the economic issue raised by the Executive has been evacuated, the Assembly can support the reactivation with other projects announced at the beginning of the administration. What the Assembly is doing is not bad, Lloret emphasizes, because it is in tune with what people need at the moment.
Marlon Cadena (ID) argues that Parliament must work at two levels: the conjuncture and the legislative agenda where it is required that the transcendent issues be addressed, otherwise its action will end in long and exhausting debates of the issues that jump in the public opinion many times derived from scandals.
Cadena recalls that before issues such as Pandora Papers and the prison crisis, the Executive dedicated itself to blaming the Legislature for alleged blockades of the first urgent Law related to the creation of opportunities when it did not observe the procedure, and after the conflict determined that dialogue is the tool.
The Assembly has been absorbed by the situation and unfortunately falls into that morass and ends up exhausted. But he added that the blocks turned on the warning lights to resume the agenda.
The president of the Audit Commission, Fernando Villavicencio (Concertación), assures that at the moment what the Assembly has done is to attend to the natural situation that arises in the country and also to respond to the Executive; In other words, the initiative has not been taken, being the first power of the State.
In what the Assembly has responded is in the work of inspection, affirms the legislator, who announces that the reports on corruption in emblematic works, such as Coca Codo Sinclair and Yachay, are almost ready; the INA Papers; and especially the debts with Petrochina. All this, he says, will cause a national shock and information. (I)
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