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387 Buenos Aires, August 16, 1923 To the Honorable Congress of the Nation The executive submits the attached bill for the honorable gentlemen’s consideration, declaring the need to amend certain provisions of the national Constitution. As it stated at the opening of the current legislative sessions, the executive believes our fundamental law has gradually to be perfected by means of partial amendments, as advised by experience. The executive believes the amendments indicated in the attached bill to be of such a nature. Of course, the election of senators by the provincial legislatures has paved the way for a good many political disturbances, which have frequently been the motive for national intervention in order to return the enjoyment and exercise of republican institutions to the disturbed provinces . The United States, which we have imitated in this form of election , has already abolished it, handing to the people the right to choose members of the Senate directly, just as it does members of the other chamber. There is no reason for us to keep a system that has brought us worse results than in its country of origin. The form of renewal of the Chamber of Deputies also requires change. The present system—renewing half the chamber every two years—does not respond to the need to consult the opinion of the entire nation periodically and simultaneously, as it is done in the world’s great democracies. The lower chamber is entirely renewed at certain times in Great Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Chile, and many other countries. This 4 maRCElo toRCuato dE alVEaR and José NiColás matiENzo Message and Bill of the Executive Declaring the Need to Amend Articles 42, 46, 67, Section 7, and 75 and 87 of the National Constitution (1923) Original title: “Mensaje y proyecto del poder ejecutivo, declarando necessaria la reforma de la Constitución Nacional.” Source: Cámara de Senadores, Diario de Sesiones [Senate, Congressional Records], August 28, 1923. 388 : MarceLo torcuato de aLvear and JoSé nIcoLáS MatIenzo is the only way to give periodic access in parliament to the predominant opinion in the nation as a whole. The Chamber of Deputies in our constitutional regime is meant to collectively represent the people of the nation, considered as a single state (Arts. 36 and 37), unlike the Senate, which represents the provinces and the capital as separate entities (Arts. 36 and 46). If, then, it is understandable that the form of renewal of the Senate not take into account the need to simultaneously consult the opinion of the nation as a whole, this need cannot be overlooked where the chamber in which the Argentine people has to be represented as a united whole is concerned. Having established this, it seems advisable that the general elections for the renewal of both chambers take place at the same time and periodically coincide with the elections for the president of the Republic. To this end, the deputies’ mandates need only be set at three years so that, upon their termination, a third of the Senate also terminates, and every two triennia this event also coincides with the renewal of the nation ’s presidency. Such a reform would lend the national government a broader democratic base and ensure harmony among the political powers wherever possible. As for the organization of the executive, experience has shown that it is appropriate to introduce two amendments into the Constitution. One of them, the more important, mentions the impediments that bring about the delegation of the executive in the legal replacement. The first clause of Article 75 mentions sickness and absence from the capital as being among the causes that render the president unable to exercise executive power. The second clause in the same article, anticipating that the vice president may also be impeded, replaces those two grounds with the general term of inability, which implicitly establishes that sickness and absence from the capital need only be taken into account when they do truly render the president unable to exercise executive power. This is how presidents have understood it in practical terms. But the fact cannot be ignored that the article is worded with an ambiguity that leaves room for doubts and may indeed be the source of more or less serious conflicts. Moreover, when the president absents himself from the capital in order to carry out official duties in any part of the national territory, there is no reason whatsoever to justify the...

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