“This will be a congress that guarantees change: we will make history!” said Senator Roy Barreras, who had just been elected President of the Colombian Congress for a year, on July 20, 2022. The leader of the negotiations, so that the government of Gustavo Petro , the first leftist president in the country’s contemporary history, would command a broad legislative majority, showing great ambition for what was to come. Eleven months later, after the end of the legislative period for which he was elected, the balance is different: Barreras lost his seat due to a court decision; the government remained without majorities, especially in the Senate; Petro’s major social reforms either fail or advance in spurts. The optimism that swept Barreras was reflected in a first semester of pragmatism and legislative successes, but vanished in the second, the concluding one, in which there was renewed polarization inside and outside the Capitol.
The original proposal: the broad front
When Gustavo Petro won the presidency in the second round of voting, Congress was already in place and his campaign was struggling with parties that were able to build a majority against him. Three months earlier, in March 2022, his movement had garnered the most votes in the Senate and House of Representatives. But this historic pact fell far short of winning a majority. Almost 17% of the vote for the upper house gave him 20 of the 108 seats, while the parties campaigning against him had 67 seats. In the chamber, which has constituencies in each department, the President’s movement won only 29 of the 187 seats.
Despite this low entry fee, he assembled a super majority. He did so thanks to the natural appeal of a new president and the ability of Petro’s allies to garner more support for someone who had campaigned with a pragmatism unprecedented in his career and accepted traditional politicians like Barreras or Armando Benedetti in key positions. When Congress was installed on July 20, Petro was backed by the benches of the traditional parties against whom he made a career in politics, and was even shaped by the right like the centenary of the Conservative Party.
The optimism was enormous. Thus began Barreras’ inaugural address: “Never in our modern history has there been a day so momentous, representing independence and freedom, as this day when we can and will say: ‘The terrible night has ended and in ruts of pain’ now germinate well’. This Congress is the most diverse in its history, full of alternative voices that have a majority, have a vote, have a voice for the first time.” Petro’s said something similar: “There are many tasks and I trust our representatives of Colombian society in Congress fully. new and old”.
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And so it was the first semester in which Petro also made agreements for the implementation, especially of its two large projects. An ambitious tax reform aimed at raising tax revenues for the wealthiest without fundamentally changing the tax system was passed with some adjustments, but the core remained intact and garnered broad support in Congress. Also, the so-called “Total Peace Act,” which extended the authority that all Congresses have given to Presidents for nearly 30 years to negotiate with illegal armed groups, but this time was adapted at once to the ambitious idea of negotiating, could be easily implemented and for everyone and at the same time, with all types of groups, from ELN guerrillas to local criminal gangs.
The first of the two semesters of the legislative period ended with joy. Unlike many previous cases, tax reform did not require extraordinary sessions in which congressmen sang Christmas carols while also setting tax breaks. The government had received the money for its social investments and the legal framework for its big project. But the thickest part was missing, as Chamber President and Historical Pact Congressman David Racero told this newspaper at the time: “This semester we decided to have a public debate on economics and peace.” Next semester we will have the debate lead around the social. And I’m honest, the country will remember us for the societal changes we’re going to make next year. There we will see whether we succeed or fail.”
David Racero at the National Capitol, September 2022. Juan Felipe Rubio
The break for health
The healthcare reform that Gustavo Petro’s government presented to Congress on February 13 this year was the beginning of the end of his legislative coalition. Although the mere idea of increasing the state’s role in the system met with strong opposition even in his cabinet, the President gave it priority over the other two proposals to adjust the welfare system, with reforms to pensions and the labor system. Led by now-ex-minister Carolina Corcho, Petro’s bid made Petro feel he had ministers at odds with his government. This led first to the departure of Education Minister Alejandro Gaviria, a staunch opponent of the project and Petro’s rival in the presidential elections, and then to the departure of Finance Minister José Antonio Ocampo and Agriculture Minister Cecilia López, whom they had supported Gaviria on the issues and who was with him the formed the central area of the cabinet. Corcho himself also left the company due to wear and tear.
In retrospect, that row was at the root of many of Petro’s government problems, reflected this week in the failure of two of its flagship projects: labor reform and legalizing cannabis sales. In addition to the crisis in the cabinet, health care reform sparked differences with Barreras, who played an important role as a bridge to congressmen from parties such as the Conservative, the Liberal and his former party, the US.
Francia Márquez, Carolina Corcho and Gustavo Petro presenting the healthcare reform proposal on February 13. Fernando Vergara (AP)
Barreras, who was dismissed by the Council of State a few weeks later for double militancy, publicly expressed his objections to the reform. So did La U director Dilian Francisca Toro, former President and Liberal Party leader César Gaviria, and many conservatives. In the midst of these discussions, the Senate’s first commission, at the end of March, rejected the political reform proposed by the government. It was the President’s first major defeat and a harbinger of things to come.
A month later, Petro made the unilateral decision to break with the legislative coalition. He did so via his Twitter account: “The political coalition agreed upon by the majority ended today by the decision of some party leaders. Some of them threaten the majority of their own faction.” The next day he sacked seven of his ministers, including Corcho, Ocampo and López. The United States and the Conservative Party, two of the largest and most powerful members of Congress, responded by officially withdrawing from the coalition and signing the Declaration of Independence.
Many liberal congressmen also began to distance themselves. As a result, legislative initiatives could not be implemented as quickly as expected. One of Petro’s final victories in Congress was the approval of the National Development Plan, in which the prudent work of National Planning and the Treasury achieved majorities, in part because the Constitution requires the President to issue his initial if Congress does not approve the project per Decree.
A woman protests against government reforms in Bogotá in April. LUISA GONZALEZ (Portal)
With the already broken coalition came scandals that undermined the president’s stability. First it was the ex-wife of his son Nicolás Petro, a member of the Atlantic Historic Pact, who denounced that his former partner allegedly received large sums of money from criminals during the election campaign. The president’s brother was later accused of holding meetings, making pacts and receiving money from drug dealers and clans in exchange for benefits. The most recent and strongest complaint began with a robbery allegedly committed by Laura Sarabia’s babysitter, Petro’s fired right-hand man; He continued with some audio recordings in which Armando Benedetti, then Ambassador to Venezuela, threatened to disclose the allegedly illegal funding of the campaign; and that they are implicated in the suicide of one of the police officers in charge of the President’s security.
These denunciations undermined Congress’ ability to govern, while its image sank as October’s regional elections approached. In the past few weeks, the government has managed to pass two important constitutional reforms: agrarian jurisdiction and the recognition of the peasantry as a legal subject. However, the three social reforms did not have the same luck. The work collapsed; and pensions and health barely survived and will continue their course next semester, but they have yet to go through the Senate, which is farther from Petro than the Chamber. And healthcare reform stalled almost a month ago in the chamber’s plenary session, where the government tried unsuccessfully to start discussing the articles. Even representatives of the Greens, who are part of the coalition, called on Petro to withdraw.
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