Chamber of Deputies of the Nation

Cámara de Diputados de la Nación
2023–2025 period
Coat of arms or logo
Type
Type
Term limits
None
Leadership
Martín Menem, LLA
since 10 December 2023[1]
1st Vice President
Cecilia Moreau, UP
since 10 December 2023
First Minority Leader
Germán Martínez, UP
since 1 February 2022
Second Minority Leader
Cristian Ritondo, PRO–JxC
since 10 December 2019
Structure
Seats257 (List)
Political groups
Government (40)
  •   LLA (38)
  •   BsAs Libre (2)

Allies (39)

Independent (71)

Opposition (107)

Length of term
4 years
Elections
Party-list proportional representation
D'Hondt method
Last election
22 October 2023
(130 seats)
Next election
19 October 2025
Meeting place
Chamber of Deputies, Congress Palace,
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Website
hcdn.gob.ar

The Chamber of Deputies (Spanish: Cámara de Diputados de la Nación), officially the Honorable Chamber of Deputies of the Argentine Nation, is the lower house of the Argentine National Congress (Spanish: Congreso de la Nación). It is made up of 257 national deputies who are elected in multi-member constituencies corresponding with the territories of the 23 provinces of Argentina (plus the Federal Capital) by party list proportional representation. Elections to the Chamber are held every two years, so that half of its members are up in each election, making it a rare example of staggered elections used in a lower house.

The Constitution of Argentina lays out certain attributions that are unique to the Chamber of Deputies. The Chamber holds exclusive rights to levy taxes; to draft troops; and to accuse the president, cabinet ministers, and members of the Supreme Court before the Senate. Additionally, the Chamber of Deputies receives for consideration bills presented by popular initiative.

The Chamber of Deputies is presided over by the president of the Chamber (Spanish: Presidente de la Cámara), who is deputized by three vice presidents. All of them are elected by the chamber itself.

Current 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 Autonomous City of Buenos Aires) using proportional representation (list PR), D'Hondt formula with a 3% of the district registered voters threshold, and the following distribution:

By province

Province Deputies Population (2010)
Buenos Aires City 24 2,890,151
Buenos Aires 70 15,625,084
Catamarca 5 367,828
Chaco 7 1,053,466
Chubut 5 506,668
Córdoba 18 3,304,825
Corrientes 7 993,338
Entre Ríos 9 1,236,300
Formosa 5 527,895
Jujuy 6 672,260
La Pampa 5 316,940
La Rioja 5 331,847
Mendoza 10 1,741,610
Misiones 7 1,097,829
Neuquén 5 550,334
Río Negro 5 633,374
Salta 7 1,215,207
San Juan 6 680,427
San Luis 5 431,588
Santa Cruz 5 272,524
Santa Fe 19 3,200,736
Santiago del Estero 7 896,461
Tierra del Fuego 5 126,190
Tucumán 9 1,448,200

By political groups

127 of the current members of the Chamber of Deputies for the 2023–2025 period were elected in 2021, while the remaining 130 were elected in 2023 legislative election. The governing La Libertad Avanza alliance, to which President Javier Milei belongs, is the fourth-largest parliamentary bloc with 33 deputies, while the main opposition, Union for the Homeland, holds the first minority with 100 deputies.

Bloc Leader
Union for the Homeland (102) Germán Martínez
La Libertad Avanza (38) Oscar Zago
PRO (37) Cristian Ritondo
Radical Civic Union (34) Rodrigo de Loredo
We Do Federal Coalition (23) Miguel Ángel Pichetto
Federal Innovation (9) Pamela Calletti
Workers' Left Front – Unity (5) Myriam Bregman
For Santa Cruz (2) José Luis Garrido
Production and Labour (2) Nancy Viviana Picón Martínez
Free Buenos Aires (2) Carolina Píparo
Avanza Libertad (1) José Luis Espert
CREO (1) Paula Omodeo
The Union of Mendoza (1) Álvaro Martínez
Source: hcdn.gob.ar (last update: 31 December 2023)

Requirements

Individuals elected to congress must be at least twenty five years old with at least four years of active citizenship and it has to be naturalized in the province that is being elected to or at least have two years of immediate residency in said province. (Art. 48 of the Argentine Constitution).

History

The Chamber of Deputies was provided for in the Constitution of Argentina, ratified on May 1, 1853. Eligibility requisites are that members be at least twenty-five years old, and have been a resident of the province they represent for at least two years; as congressional seats are elected at-large, members nominally represent their province, rather than a district.[2]

Otherwise patterned after Article One of the United States Constitution per legal scholar Juan Bautista Alberdi's treatise, Bases de la Constitución Argentina, the chamber was originally apportioned in one seat per 33,000 inhabitants. The constitution made no provision for a national census, however, and because the Argentine population doubled every twenty years from 1870 to 1930 as a result of immigration (disproportionately benefiting Buenos Aires and the Pampas area provinces), censuses were conducted generationally, rather than every decade, until 1947.[3]

Apportionment controversy

The distribution of the Chamber of Deputies is regulated since 1982 by Law 22.847, also called Ley Bignone, enacted by the last Argentine dictator, General Reynaldo Bignone, ahead of the 1983 general elections. This law established that, initially, each province shall have one deputy per 161,000 inhabitants, with standard rounding; after this is calculated, each province is granted three more deputies. If a province has fewer than five deputies, the number of deputies for that province is increased to reach that minimum.

Controversially, apportionment remains based on the 1980 population census, and has not been modified since 1983; national censuses since then have been conducted in 1991, 2001, 2010, and 2022. The minimum of five seat per province allots the smaller ones a disproportionately large representation, as well. Accordingly, this distribution does not reflect Argentina's current population balance.[4]

Presidents of the Chamber

The president of the Chamber is elected by a majority of the Chamber's members. Traditionally, the presidency is held by a member of the party or alliance of the national executive, though exceptions have occurred, such as in 2001, when the Peronist Eduardo Camaño was elected president of the Chamber during the presidency of the radical Fernando de la Rúa.[5] The officeholders for this post since 1983 have been:

President Party Term start Term end Province
Juan Carlos Pugliese UCR 29 November 1983 3 April 1989  Buenos Aires Province
Leopoldo Moreau UCR 26 April 1989 6 July 1989  Buenos Aires Province
Alberto Pierri PJ 6 July 1989 1 December 1999  Buenos Aires Province
Rafael Pascual UCR 1 December 1999 5 December 2001  City of Buenos Aires
Eduardo Camaño PJ 5 December 2001 6 December 2005  Buenos Aires Province
Alberto Balestrini PJ–FPV 6 December 2005 12 December 2007  Buenos Aires Province
Eduardo Fellner PJ–FPV 12 December 2007 6 December 2011  Jujuy
Julián Domínguez PJ–FPV 6 December 2011 4 December 2015  Buenos Aires Province
Emilio Monzó PRO–C 4 December 2015 10 December 2019  Buenos Aires Province
Sergio Massa FDT 10 December 2019 2 August 2022  Buenos Aires Province
Cecilia Moreau FDT/UP 2 August 2022 7 December 2023  Buenos Aires Province
Martín Menem LLA 7 December 2023 Incumbent  La Rioja (Argentina)

Current authorities

Leadership positions include:

TitleOfficeholderPartyProvince
Chamber PresidentMartín MenemLa Libertad Avanza La Rioja (Argentina)
First Vice-PresidentCecilia MoreauUnión por la Patria Buenos Aires Province
Second Vice-PresidentGermán MartínezUnión por la Patria Santa Fe
Third Vice-PresidentCristian RitondoPRO–JxC Buenos Aires Province
Parliamentary Secretary
Administrative Secretary
Coordinating Secretary

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Con amplio acuerdo de la oposición, Martín Menem fue elegido presidente de la Cámara de Diputados". Infobae.
  2. ↑ Honorable Senado de la Nación: Constitución Nacional Archived 2012-05-13 at the Wayback Machine (in Spanish)
  3. ↑ Indec: Historia de los censos Archived 2016-05-09 at the Wayback Machine (in Spanish)
  4. ↑ Reynoso, Diego Esteban (June 2012). "El reparto de la representación. Antecedentes y distorsiones de la asignación de diputados a las provincias". Postdata (in Spanish). Buenos Aires. 17 (1): 153-192. ISSN 1851-9601.
  5. ↑ Domínguez, Juan José (14 October 2021). "Santoro dijo que la propuesta de Vidal de exigir "la Presidencia de la Cámara de Diputados no había ocurrido nunca"". Chequeado (in Spanish). Retrieved 18 December 2021.
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