The United States Senate has become "a legislative cemetery"

Audio 19:30

US President Joe Biden, January 11, 2022, during his speech in Atlanta.

Getty Images via AFP - MEGAN VARNER

By: Mikaël Ponge Follow |

Mikaël Ponge Follow

3 min

Joe Biden is playing big.

In order to get Congress to vote on two texts to defend access to the right to vote for minorities, the American president is ready to pass in force to the Senate where the Republicans block his texts.

But reforming the legislative rules as he hopes is not a given.  

Advertising

To get around the blocking of Republican senators on these texts, Joe Biden needs the support of all 50 Democratic senators. But two of them are hesitant and the Republicans denounce them

"an unacceptable coup"

. The American president proposes to abandon the rule of 60 votes to adopt these texts by a simple majority. The only way for him to get around the “filibuster”, a parliamentary obstruction tool  

“which dates back to the beginning of the 19th century, and allows a senator to express himself in complete freedom without being interrupted by his peers”,

explains our guest, François Vergniolle de Chantal, professor at the University of Paris.

"The filibuster aimed to legitimize the point of view of minorities",

but in its implementation, the practice has been misguided.

Today, 

"it has become simpler in its use so that it is omnipresent in the Senate so that the Senate is an assembly where the slightest decision-making is blocked

. "

For François Vergniolle de Chantal, 

"the current Senate is a legislative cemetery"

.

This is partly due to the polarization of political life.

And the professor recalled that

"it is the senators who define the rules of the upper chamber, no one can tell them what to do, the president has nothing to say so the situation for Joe Biden is very difficult".

Haiti: commemorations of January 12 on the sly

“As expected, the commemoration of the 12th anniversary of January 12 will not be remembered,”

according to Frantz Duval, editor-in-chief of the daily

Le Nouvelliste

.

12 years after the terrible earthquake of 2010 which killed more than 250,000 people, everything has been done to minimize commemorations according to the journalist.

"Everything is done to make January 12 a normal day, it's a shame."

In the daily columns, moreover, geologist Claude Prépetit specifies that no public policy has been adopted during the last 12 years following the earthquake to reduce the vulnerability of the Haitian population to seismic risks.

In Chile, controversy over the allocation of lithium extraction batch

A Chinese company and a Chilean company won, in part, a tender launched by the Chilean government for the extraction of lithium, for a total amount of 121 million euros. For a period of seven years devoted to exploration followed by an additional 20 years for exploitation, they will each exploit 80,000 tonnes of lithium, or 1.8% of the known lithium reserves in Chile. A few weeks before the inauguration of the elected president of the left, "the government of Sebastian Piñera is seeking conflict", estimates the press, since Gabriel Boric, who will take the reins of the country on March 11, 2022, has promised the creation of a state-owned lithium mining company and asked the outgoing right-wing team not to take any initiative on the matter.

Newsletter

Receive all international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

google-play-badge_FR

  • United States

  • Joe biden

  • Haiti

  • Earthquake in Haiti

  • Chile

  • Raw materials

  • China

On the same subject

United States: Joe Biden takes a big political risk to pass a vast electoral reform

Americas Press Review

In the spotlight: Haiti, 12 years after the earthquake

In Chile, allocation of lithium mining lots divides right and left