The new bicameral Congress is about to begin operations, and there are some procedural details that will be developed from its installation that we must take into account, since the correct functioning in the first six months will depend on that. If we do not proceed correctly – before even thinking about an agenda – what lies ahead could be true chaos.
The first thing to take into account is the issue of personnel. What will happen to the staff of the unicameral era? A minimum team is needed to guarantee installation, but Parliament has an overcrowded payroll. There are versions that say that – after more than 15 years – a public contest would be resumed to determine who stays. But how long can that take? Hard to imagine they will do it until August.
To this panorama we must add that we will now have 60 senators, in addition to the 130 deputies. In total, 190 legislators who will have more than 1,300 workers in their offices (more than 400 additional advisors to those of the unicameral era). The problem is aggravated because the majority do not opt for technical or experienced personnel in legislative matters, but rather initially opt for paying favors from their campaign staff or financiers.
As a second point, there are the areas that depend on the Board of Directors (Editorial Fund, International Cooperation, Citizen Participation, among others). It is not clear how these offices will be distributed because each chamber – that of deputies and senators – will have its own Board of Directors. It is known that the distributions of these offices are put on the table in the formation of the lists for the Board of Directors.
The third thing to take into account: the ordinary commissions that are also a matter of negotiation for the Board of Directors. The number of places has been reduced and we have two chambers that will fight for their interests (technical profiles are hardly prioritized for presidencies).
In summary, we will have a series of disputes in the midst of the arrangements for the return of a bicameral system, to which we return after more than 30 years. And in the short term we have an important agenda to define: the delegation of legislative powers announced by the new government, the ratification of Julio Velarde in the BCR, the future of Reinfo and the 2027 Budget Law.
The outlook is not encouraging at all, and it will take some time to see how the coordination between deputies and senators works, if this relationship does not wear out in the first stage of the administration. I fear that several deputies arrive with a populist agenda, so the Senate will have to be able to say no from the start. ‘Winter is coming’.
