The election year and Cristina Kirchner's conviction have strained the climate in Congress.

The advance of the election year and the conviction of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner are straining the atmosphere in Congress, and the ruling party fears a paralysis of legislative activity.

Unión por la Patria has stepped up its offensive, and La Libertad Avanza believes that allied Peronist governors—who are key whenever they order their legislators to absent themselves or abstain— will have less room to maneuver in this situation, in which the opposition is pushing for unity and hardening its opposition to President Javier Milei.

"Those who are on one side or the other are going to become more extreme and more visible. It's going to be harder to disassociate themselves," says a member of the House of Representatives.

Last week, the faction led by Germán Martínez withdrew from the Constitutional Affairs Committee. "Argentina is suffering a dangerous slide toward authoritarianism. For this reason , we are withdrawing and we declare that the rule of law is dying," Leopoldo Moreau denounced before the UP legislators left.

That day, the ruling party suffered a setback: it was unable to approve the bill modifying the composition of the National Audit Office—an initiative of the Speaker of the Chamber himself, Martín Menem—because it lacked a signature to obtain approval.

During the regular session that began in March, the Rosada has not yet approved any of its own laws, although it did manage to ratify the DNU on debt with the IMF .

Now , the Casa Rosada needs to give the green light to the Tax Innocence initiative to encourage the use of dollars "under the mattress ." While they said the process would be swift, it's already being delayed due to doubts about the numbers and the risk of opening the office in this context.

Menem spoke with Luis Caputo's Economy team, and they will try to hold at least one briefing, even though this week is also short due to the holidays. "There's not much of a rush because the provinces are already signing the agreements," LLA explains.

Meanwhile, the ruling party is trying to stem the tide . In the Senate, Unión por la Patria—with support from CFK—will seek to expedite the passage of the laws that restore pensions and the one declaring a disability emergency . They are working to secure approval with a two-thirds vote, which will make it difficult for Milei to veto them.

In the House of Representatives, Kirchnerism, along with the pro-dialogue factions, is prepared to insist on a vexing issue for the government: the commission of inquiry into the LIBRA case , which the ruling party is trying to block by all means possible.

Now, the UP, Civic Coalition, Democracy Forever, and Federal Encounter factions are pursuing a new approach to break the committee's deadlock: they have presented a draft resolution that proposes that "the proposed member who has the support of the committee members whose parliamentary blocs collectively represent the largest number of deputies in the Chamber will be appointed as president."

"For 40 days, the ruling party and its allies have been doing everything possible to block it: they manipulated the integration, forced a tie in the appointment of authorities, emptied the commission, and prevented it from being resolved in the last session," complained Maximiliano Ferraro, the author of the initiative.

To be voted on in the House, the bill must first obtain a ruling from the Constitutional Affairs Committee, chaired by Libertarian Nicolás Mayoraz, and the Petitions, Powers, and Regulations Committee, chaired by Silvia Lospennato of the PRO party. If they don't convene the committees, the opposition is already planning to summon them to the next session. This is another reason why the ruling party prefers to delay the opening of the House.

As the provincial fronts close in and the time for national decisions approaches, the blocs are experiencing divisions. Evidence of this was evident in the last session, where the ruling party's allies—the PRO and the UCR—exhibited internal differences.

The number of Radicals who disassociated themselves from Rodrigo De Loredo's party's decision not to grant a quorum has risen to four. " It's now clear that beyond group affiliation, the proximity of the elections means that each party must play its own particular role," the party acknowledges.

While in the PRO, when it came time to vote on the pension restructuring , there were nine Macristas who abstained instead of voting against as they had agreed in the bloc meeting led by Cristian Ritondo,

"Everything is fine within the bloc. It's just that some tension has begun to show over the ruling party's disregard for allied blocs in particular and Congress in general," explained one of those who broke away from the PRO.

Most of them were prominent figures close to former President Mauricio Macri, such as María Eugenia Vidal and Silvia Lospennato.