Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro proposed a constituent assembly to push through reforms that appear to be going nowhere in Congress.
The proposal triggered a political storm with the president of congress accusing Petro of “sabre rattling” and the far-right mayor of Medellin claiming that the president wanted a civil war.
Political analysts were somewhat dumbfounded by Petro as the same Congress that has so far refused to approve the president’s reform proposals would also have to approve a constituent assembly.
While talking to supporters in the city of Cali, the president expressed his frustration about congressional conservatives’ refusal to ratify his proposed rural, labor, pension and health reforms.
Petro additionally decried a flurry of legal actions taken against his government coalition, which has so far forced three coalition senators to step down.
If the institutions that we have today in Colombia are not capable of living up to the social reforms that the people, through their vote, demanded and commanded, then it is not the people who are going to kneel down and go home defeated. It is the transformations of these institutions that must be presented.
It is not the people who leave. It is the institution that changes. That is the history of democracy and of free peoples.
And, therefore, if this possibility of a popularly elected government in the midst of this State and under the Constitution of Colombia cannot apply the Constitution because they surround it in order not to apply it and they prevent it, then Colombia has to go to a National Constituent Assembly.
Colombia does not have to kneel down. The popular triumph of 2022 must be respected and the National Constituent Assembly must transform the institutions so that they obey the people’s mandate for peace and justice.
President Gustavo Petro
In order to create constituent assembly, the majority of both chambers of Congress would have to approve the creation of a body that has the power to rewrite the constitution.
Subsequently, more than one third of the voters — more people than voted for Petro in the 2022 elections — would have to ratify this decision in a referendum.
The chances of this happening are currently slim as the president has lost popularity since taking office.
