MundoAndino Home : Argentina Guide at MundoAndino
Argentine Chamber of Deputies
Topics: Argentine deputies Government of Argentina
The Chamber of Deputies is the lower house of the National Congress, Argentina's parliament. This Chamber holds exclusive rights to create taxes, to draft troops, and to accuse the President, the ministers and the members of the Supreme Court before the Senate.
Composition
It has 257 seats and one-half of the members are elected every two years to serve four-year terms by the people of each district (23 provinces and the Federal Capital) using proportional representation, D'Hondt formula with a 3% of the district registered voters threshold, and the following distribution:
Buenos Aires Province: 70 deputies
Capital Federal: 25 deputies
Catamarca Province: 5 deputies
Chaco Province: 7 deputies
Chubut Province: 5 deputies
Cordoba Province: 18 deputies
Corrientes Province: 7 deputies
Entre Rios Province: 9 deputies
Formosa Province: 5 deputies
Jujuy Province: 6 deputies
La Pampa Province: 5 deputies
La Rioja Province: 5 deputies
Mendoza Province: 10 deputies
Misiones Province: 7 deputies
Neuquen Province: 5 deputies
Rio Negro Province: 5 deputies
Salta Province: 7 deputies
San Juan Province: 6 deputies
San Luis Province: 5 deputies
Santa Cruz Province: 5 deputies
Santa Fe Province: 19 deputies
Santiago del Estero Province: 7 deputies
Tucuman Province: 9 deputies
Tierra del Fuego Province: 5 deputies
Controversy
The distribution of the Chamber of Deputies is regulated since 1983 by Law 22.847, also called Ley Bignone ("Bignone Law"). This law establishes that initially each province shall have one deputy per 161,000 inhabitants, with standard rounding. After this is calculated, each province is granted three deputies more. If a province has fewer than five deputies, the number of deputies for that province is increased to reach that minimum.
The main problem today is that the distribution has not been changed since 1983, using the 1980 population census, though there have been two other censuses since then . So this distribution does not reflect Argentina's current population balance.
Leading senators
Leading positions include:
Chamber President - Dip. Eduardo Fellner (FPV)
First Vice-President - Dip. Patricia Vaca Narvaja (FPV)
Second Vice-President - Dip. Liliana Bayonzo (UCR)
Third Vice-President - Dip. Marcela Rodriguez (Civic Coalition)
Administrative Secretary - Ricardo Vazquez
Parliamentary Secretary - Enrique Hidalgo
Leader of the Front for Victory block - Dip. Agustin Rossi
Leader of the UCR block - Dip. Oscar Aguad
2005 election
See List of current Argentine Deputies
External links
Camara de Diputados de la Nacion
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Argentine Chamber of Deputies
