President Gustavo Petro is unhappy and disgusted with what has happened in recent days in the Colombian Congress with the most important reforms of his government. Added to the failure of last Tuesday’s financing law is the systematic postponement of the debate on the law that would keep the Ministry of Equality alive and the delaying strategies used by opposition deputies to debate neither agrarian jurisdiction nor health reform for almost a year.
Petro believes that there is an institutional blockage on the part of Congress which opposes the bills, as he puts it, simply because they are proposed by his government. He also knows that eight months before the end of his mandate, and in the middle of an electoral campaign, it is very difficult to rebuild a solid coalition that will allow him to regain the legislative control he had during his first months in power. It is for this reason that, in his latest messages on social networks, he raised his voice against the Senate and the House of Representatives and insisted on the urgency of a National Constituent Assembly which allows the changes that, according to him, the country needs, to become a reality.
The tone and content of his most recent trills recall the complex moments of the conflict he had with Congress when they defeated health reform, labor reform or when they refused popular consultation. At that time he called them “slavers”, “HPS”, “oligarchs” and other aggressive insults. He now accuses them of wanting to extort the government, of being ignorant and of betraying the people who elected them. “Today what the opposition deputies have done is suicidal,” the president said at the start of the last message, referring to the failure of tax reform by the economic commissions. “Putting the national interest on the ground through political hatred is worthy of the times when people were sent to kill each other. Hate becomes the most absolute contempt for citizens,” continued the president.
Gradually, the message written on his In the midst of the insults, the president returns to his proposal for a constituent assembly, which he had announced for months, but which still remains a pending idea, without much real support. “In truth, obtaining a citizen majority in the Colombian Congress and isolating the political mafia must aim to liberate constituent power,” Petro wrote. And he added: “The commission of the Constituent Assembly, recently created by the strongest social forces in the country, must now register the bill which will be presented to the next congress. » He declared that the submission of this bill before the new Congress, which will be installed on July 20, 2016, will be his last act of government and that he will do it in the public square and with the sword of Bolivar. “This constituent power must be born in the heart of every Colombian citizen, starting with those who, because of their age, will exercise the first vote. »
Petro’s insistence on a thorough reform of the 1991 Constitution, which would allow the next president to realize the reforms he has so far failed to achieve, is beginning to become an important and controversial issue in the electoral campaign. The majority of center and right forces, opposed to the government, criticize this possibility and defend the current constitution. The senator of the Green Alliance, Angélica Lozano, expressed her refusal in a message on The representative of the Democratic Center, Andrés Forero, who will run for the Senate next year, also closed the door to this possibility: “I regret that the President of the Republic uses the speech of the Constituent Assembly, not to unite the Colombian people, but to divide them. Perhaps the only ones who supported the president’s idea are the candidate of the Historic Pact, Iván Cepeda Castro, the former mayor of Medellín Daniel Quintero and the head of the left list in the Senate, Carolina Corcho.
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