Petro opens the door to the Constituent Assembly due to the stagnation of his reforms

When Gustavo Petro was a presidential candidate, one of the fears that his opponents linked to his eventual victory was that, once in power, he would call for a National Constituent Assembly that would allow him to maintain leadership of the country after 2026. Before and after his victory in the presidential elections, the current President of Colombia emphasized that He will leave power once his four-year term ends. But this Friday, the president revived old fears by signaling the possibility of calling a constituent assembly given the stagnation of his reforms in the Republic's Congress.

Pietro mentioned the idea in a speech in Cali, the main city in the Colombian Pacific region and to which he largely owes the fact that he is president today, having in 2021 been one of the nerve centers of the national strike that will serve as a springboard to reach the Nariño Palace. The President stated it in a simple way, far from the complexity involved in a reform of this kind: “If there is this possibility of forming a popularly elected government in the middle of this state and under the Constitution of Colombia, the Constitution cannot be applied because it surrounds and if they do not implement it and prevent it, Colombia must go To the National Constituent Assembly. He later added: “The National Constituent Assembly must transform institutions so that they obey the people with its mandate of peace and justice, which is easy to achieve in Colombia.”

The president's idea represents a reaction to repeated failures of his key reforms in Congress. The latest was the health file, which this week was on the verge of being eliminated, after eight senators from the Seventh Committee of that institution signed an offer to sink the bill, and confirmed in a statement that they would not do so. They will not change their vote for any reason nor will they support any alternative proposal. Faced with this situation, the government had no major options: either withdraw the reform, wait for it to fail in the next vote in the Legislative Council, or see how time passes without voting on it.

Many political leaders reacted to Petro's statements, calling him a “dictator” and reminding him of previous promises in which he stressed that he would not call a constituent assembly – when he was a presidential candidate in 2018, and formalizing the Green Alliance's commitment to his party. He signed the Ten Commandments of promises engraved on marble tablets, including those promises. Former centrist presidential candidate Sergio Fajardo wrote in X: “He has finally announced what was always doubtful: his desire to hold a constituent assembly!” “If they don’t do what I, the people, want, we change the constitution.” Green Alliance co-chair Antonio Navarro, who was very close to Petro and a former fighter from the same fighter as the president, M-19, rejected the idea: “A new national constituent assembly does not seem necessary at this time.”

Criticism also came from European shores, as expected from the main force on the right. “Petro is a liar and an extreme leftist: yesterday he denied plans to form a constituent assembly,” wrote Senator María Fernanda Cabal, one of the most prominent opponents of the government in Congress. Today he admits his intention to impose them and promote reforms that will only bring misery and ruin. His colleague and fellow party member Paloma Valencia also spoke out, saying: “The spirit of destruction embraced by this government has no limits. Now President Petro threatens that if the reforms are not approved, there will be a Constituent Assembly. Neither the Constituent Assembly nor the Destruction.

The process of reaching the Constituent Assembly is very difficult, due to the procedures stipulated in the Basic Law. One points out that the same Congress that Petro criticizes for not promoting his reforms approves the call and that at least a third of eligible voters support it. If all of the above happened, the country would face an uncertain scenario where Assembly members would have to be elected by popular vote. The possibility of reforming the state is then presented as a double-edged sword, in this case for President Petro: candidates like him may win and there may be a favorable scenario for him, but the opposite could be the case. It also happens. It is not for nothing that the idea of ​​a Constituent Assembly is often compared to a leap into the void.

Petro is not the first political leader to mention the possibility of forming a Constituent Assembly that would lead to the replacement of the Magna Carta that has governed Colombia since 1991. In 2016, former President Álvaro Uribe announced, following peace agreements between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the now-extinct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia movement proposed as a means To review and change everything that was agreed upon in Havana, the headquarters of the negotiations. Many members of his party have proposed it on other occasions as a tool for justice reform. One of those times was in 2020, when the Supreme Court ordered the former president to be placed under house arrest, in a case of bribery and witness tampering.

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