Colombian Politics and Elections

[Flyersfan232]

I will have more to say later, but Petro just had some meltdown (again) and is now raising the possiblity of a constituent assembly "if the current constitution cannot be applied" (read: my government is too incompetent to even rename the air force properly*). This likely stems from the fact that his healthcare reform is in death throes in the Senate -- nine of the fourteen senators on the seventh commission have announced that they will support a proposal to kill the bill, this came as a sudden and unexpected blow to the government which is now both refusing to withdraw the bill but also increasingly desperate in their strategies to save it. It has survived in extremis before but this seems like the final nail in the coffin.

This constituent assembly will not happen, because the steps to get there are long and complicated (nobody in Petro's government has read the current constitution so they don't know this) but this will just fuel/prove correct the right's castrochavista nightmares and everyone else's concerns about his erratic, mercurial bargain-bin populistic strongman delusions. Petro is going to waste the remaining two and a bit years of his term in pointless self-victimizations, Twitter fights, delusional visions, demagoguery and populist speeches blaming everyone for his own incompetence and inability to govern.

Also crazy old man Rodolfo Hernández was convicted of corruption in the trash collection contract scandal. At the trial, he announced that he has terminal cancer, obviously very sad.

Somehow, Sergio Fajardo and Jorge Enrique Robledo were correct to vote blank in 2022 but in the most annoying way possible (particularly Robledo).

* the Constitutional Court yesterday struck down a law that renamed the air force to 'aerospace force' because the name 'air force' is in the constitution so it can't be changed by a regular law. nice job team.

Also, the Supreme Court finally elected Luz Adriana Camargo as attorney general. Camargo has probably the finest resume and professional background of any recent attorney general (certainly better than the past two!), as a criminal lawyer who has been prosecutor, assistant magistrate and member of the CICIG in Guatemala and a trajectory in fighting political corruption (investigating parapolítica in Colombia and with CICIG). She is, through her career path since the mid-2000s, very close to defence minister Iván Velásquez, and she will immediately need to prove her independence from him and the administration in the hot potato cases the Fiscalía is handling. Let's see how she does. I'm ready to be disappointed.

" Petro is going to waste the remaining two and a bit years of his term in pointless self-victimizations, Twitter fights, delusional visions, demagoguery and populist speeches blaming everyone for his own incompetence and inability to govern." so he is basically communist trump

[Flyersfan232]

From TITLE XIII of the constitution. I gather that it requires both chambers of Congress to pass a bill, then the Assembly is called if 1/3rd of voters agree (or is a 1/3rd margin, so 2/rd?), then the representatives are elected and Congress is suspended while they convene. Is that right?

Yes: Congress (with absolute, rather than simple, majority of members required) > mandatory review by the Constitutional Court (only for procedural defects) > referendum to convene the assembly (yes vote must = 1/3 of registered voters, or 13.4+ million votes, more than Petro won in the 2022 runoff) > election of the assembly > Congress' power to reform the constitution suspended during the assembly's term. There's no requirement for the new constitution to be adopted by referendum (the 1991 one wasn't), but it could happen. Congress would also likely be well aware of the precedent of the 1991 constituent assembly revoking the 1990 Congress' term.

The law adopted by Congress would define the jurisdiction (subject matters/topics), term, composition and electoral system for the constituent assembly, and voters in the eventual referendum would also need to vote, separately, to approve the topics that'd be within the assembly's jurisdiction.

In any case, Petro has more or less walked back the actual constituent assembly idea but has at the same time escalated the rhetoric about the 'constituent process'. From Petro's social media posts, speeches and one media interview, it's clear that by 'constituent process' Petro largely means intensifying, accelerating and escalating the popular mobilization/popular agitation in his favour that he has tried, without much success, to stir up since February 2023. He's used the term 'constituyente' to mean just about anything, except 'changing the '91 constitution' (...), under the idea of 'returning power to the people', with the idea being that the people's decisions (as the primary or original constituant) is supreme and must be obeyed by the 'established powers'. This is his biggest, most audacious attempt at galvanizing a large popular agitation in favour of his administration to stage a show of force to other institutions, convinced (wrongly, most likely) that the silent majority/his 2022 electorate remains firmly in lockstep behind him. Petro, in contrast, has been evasive about whether or not he'd ever start the actual constitutional process to convene a constituent assembly (very high chances that he won't).

Petro has mentioned 6, or 9, major issues that he says must be addressed in priority by the 'constituent process' - these are all very major issues (judicial reform, peace and reconciliation, territorial reorganization - modifying departmental and municipal boundaries, implementation of the 2016 peace agreement etc.), but also all things that could be done by way of regular constitutional reforms.

In his 'constituent process' mode, Petro has killed off the old 'national agreement' talk in favour of radical, polarizing, populist rhetoric, in early campaign mode to defend his presidency and seek to ensure his 'progressive' political project's continuity after 2026. Petro's new, more radical, version includes a strong dose of cheap class warfare and heavy attacks against 'the establishment', uribismo, the media (particularly Vicky Dávila), technocrats, 'the oligarchy' and everyone else who he is blaming for not 'letting him govern'.

The main victim of this shift in Petro's tone and behaviour will be, of course, his actual legislative agenda of reforms in Congress - the healthcare reform is dead, after the constituent assembly brouhaha you'd surely expect the pension reform (and forgotten labour reform etc.) to be dead as well. Petro will use his aggressive, belligerent rhetoric to blame everyone else for these failures and to distract attention from the fact that his legislative accomplishments will be very meagre.

Here is my Substack post about the constituent assembly fracas: https://colombiapolelxn.substack.com/p/petros-constituent-assembly-a-divisive.

how thw 2026 race shaping up to be