Buenos Aires, April 6 (NA) – Although a date for the constituent meeting has not yet been set, the bicameral commission for the oversight and monitoring of intelligence bodies and activities is already generating constant political friction. Political forces are vying for a seat at the discussion table, and this commission is also a source of maximum tension within the government. At the end of February, according to two parliamentary sources reconstructed by the Argentine News Agency (NA), the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Martín Menem, had promised the presidency of the commission to the head of the PRO bloc, Cristian Ritondo, in a private meeting also attended by the Minister of the Interior, Diego Santilli, who witnessed the offer. However, after this incident, the infighting within the government between the Chief of Staff of the Presidency, Karina Milei, and the chief advisor without portfolio, Santiago Caputo, intensified. In this context, it became an open secret that the president's sister intended to place Sebastián Pareja, an unconditional loyalist of hers, in the position promised to Ritondo. The 'sis' plan is to monitor SIDE from Congress, an agency that Caputo controls through its head Cristian Auguadra, and the Undersecretary for Administrative Affairs, José Lago Rodríguez, who manages the agency's finances. The news that Pareja would be joining the bicameral intelligence commission upset PRO, an early ally, who have not yet thrown in the towel. 'We will see in the commission if they keep their word,' the party's sources told the Argentine News Agency. For Unión por la Patria, the designated representatives for the Chamber of Deputies would initially be Agustín Rossi and Rodolfo Tailhade, although nothing is yet confirmed. Both have more than enough credentials for the role: the first for having been the intervenor of the Federal Intelligence Agency during a period of the Front for All government, and the second for having been the director of the National Intelligence School during Oscar Parrilli's tenure at the head of SIDE in 2015. The massismo and the group of federal peronists led by Victoria Tolosa Paz and Guillermo Micheli also want to join the discussion, but they are lagging behind with fewer chances than Rossi and Tailhade. The peronism's biggest problem is in the Senate, where the ruling coalition, led by Patricia Bullrich, intends to deny them at least one seat in the bicameral commission. In the previous composition, the PJ had three representatives (Wado de Pedro, Florencia López, and Oscar Parrilli), but the legislative turnover left peronism weakened, reducing its senators from 30 to 21. The UCR will have a guaranteed representative in the Senate, as it has a dozen legislators in the upper house, while Provincias Unidas hopes to place its own representative from the Chamber of Deputies. The last president of the bicameral intelligence commission was the Buenos Aires radical Martín Lousteau, before he ceased to be a senator to become a deputy. Before the former Economy Minister, the head of the commission had been the former national deputy Leopoldo Moreau, who held the position for more than four years.
