Colombian Politics Digest XIII: Reforms, decrees, constituent assemblies and agitators
The labour reform is adopted, Petro's decretazo is dead but he revives the constituent assembly chimera, the pension reform gets a second chance and more
Phew! It’s been a very busy few weeks in Colombian politics. The labour reform was adopted into law, and the Constitutional Court gave the pension reform a second chance by sending it back to Congress to repeat its final debate. Petro withdrew the decretazo—the (illegal) consulta popular-by-fiat—but just to come up with another divisive idea, now the octava papeleta for a constituent assembly in the 2026 elections. All that and more in this edition of Colombian Politics Digest.
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The labour reform is law, the decretazo is dead (and long live the constituyente)
Readers of this Substack will have followed the saga of the labour reform/Petro’s consulta popular over the past few months. It is now finally over. On June 20, both houses of Congress adopted the conciliated text of the labour reform, after the Senate on June 17 had adopted it in its fourth and final debate. The labour reform will now become law, once sanctioned by Petro. In exchange, as the government had previously indicated, the highly controversial (and very likely illegal) consulta popular-by-decree, the so-called decretazo, was withdrawn, although it had already been indefinitely frozen by the Council of State on June 18. A very busy week has concluded the saga of the labour reform and consulta/decretazo. Once again, for full context, read my previous entries here, here, here and here.
On June 17, the plenary of the Senate concluded the fourth and final debate of the labour reform, which had been revived just over a month before on May 14—the same day that the Senate had voted to reject Petro’s consulta popular on the labour reform. The text adopted by the Senate is very similar to the one that had been approved by the Senate’s fourth commission in third debate on May 27.
The Senate saved the most controversial articles of the labour reform for the last day. Senators and the government were unable to reach an agreement in the days before. Some senators claimed that Petro had refused to acquiesce to a deal, but labour minister Antonio Sanguino denied that there ever was such a deal. As in commission, the most contentious points were contract conditions for apprentices, night shift work hours, extra pay for work on Sundays and holidays and controversial part-time work articles introduced in third debate. The government emerged victorious on nearly all key points.
The apprenticeship contract will be defined as a fixed-term employment contract, as the government wanted, with the same rights and benefits as other formal employees (healthcare, pension, occupational risk insurance, severance pay, vacations, bonuses and other benefits), whereas the commission’s text had retained the current legal definition of the apprenticeship contract as a ‘special form within labour law’. Apprentices will also be paid more, 75% of the minimum wage during the in-class learning phase (currently 50%) and 100% during the practical training phase (currently 75%).
Two controversial articles, introduced by the fourth commission, that regulated part-time or hourly work and created a new mechanism of social security contributions for workers earning less than the minimum wage, were eliminated by the plenary in a close vote (51-45). The alleged ‘legalization’ of hourly work had become the government’s latest grievance in recent weeks, with Petro going as far as saying that it turned the reform into an incredibly backwards countr-reform, but supporters said that it’d merely regulate something that already exists in law and is the reality for 40% of workers in the country.
As in the third debate, the government won the day on night shift hours—starting from 7pm (currently 9pm), with no exception for small businesses (as the opposition and others were seeking) and on extra pay for work on Sundays and holidays, to be raised gradually from 75% of the hourly wage to 100% by 2027, with an immediate increase to 80% in July.
A provision, introduced by the fourth commission, that’d have allowed a four-day workweek (extending the work day and without overtime pay), was eliminated. The Pacto had vehemently opposed this provision, saying it’d allow grueling work days with no limits and no overtime pay.
The votes on some of these divisive articles were close, but the government managed to get the votes on basically all of them. The support of the Liberals and La U, the two crucial caucuses for the government in the Senate, were again decisive. The Senate, in the evening of June 17, sealed the deal by adopting the ‘title’ of the labour reform on a vote of 57 to 31. The opposition CD and CR (though CR suffered key defections that helped the government) opposed the labour reform, and have predicted a catastrophist scenario of job losses and increased labour informality as a result of the higher labour costs for employers that the reform entails.
With the Senate’s adoption in fourth debate, the labour reform just needed to go through conciliation process with the text adopted by the House last fall, but with time quickly running out: by law, it needed to be passed by June 20. Both houses’ two conciliators were named on June 18, and Pacto rep. Mafe Carrascal quickly announced that they’d propose to adopt the Senate’s text. She explained that the Senate’s text, broadly similar to what was adopted by the House, was on certain points more progressive. Only two relatively minor points were left out of the Senate’s text: medical leave for women with menstrual pains (limited by the Senate to endometriosis) and a special contract for agricultural workers (already eliminated by the plenary of the House in second debate).
On June 20, the last day of regular congressional sessions in the current 2024-2025 legislative term (legislatura), both houses convened to adopt the conciliated, final text of the labour reform. The Senate adopted it 59-16 and the House 126-2. The labour reform is now law pending the president’s signature.
The labour reform is a major political and legislative achievement for the government, and will be a major piece of Petro’s legacy. The government has proclaimed it as the most important reform in the last 25 or 100 years, and Petro said that the working class had won its first victory in 34 years (since the 1991 constitution). Everyone has claimed credit for this victory. A few days before, during another of his hours-long livestreamed cabinet meetings, Petro claimed, not without reason, that the labour reform was ‘saved’ by the consulta popular and popular mobilization in the streets. It’s true that there would have been no labour reform had Petro not called for the consulta after the seventh commission swiftly killed and buried the labour reform, without any real debate. The reform was ‘revived’ in May when senators realized, at the last moment, that it was an alternative escape valve to the government’s consulta and all that it implied.
But Congress deserves some of the credit as well. As Green senator Angélica Lozano, one of the main exponents of the appeal that revived the labour reform, pointed out, the Senate was able to approve the labour reform in just 37 days, from May 15 to June 20, a rather remarkable feat. For once, the Senate showed its best face, showing what can be done when senators work together, making compromises to reach some degree of consensus.
As the government had previously pledged, Petro withdrew the decree calling the consulta popular.
However, this decretazo had already been frozen by the Council of State on June 18. The Council of State provisionally suspended the presidential decree calling the consulta popular. While it didn’t rule on the merits of the case yet, the provisional suspension still clearly indicated that at first glance there was a violation of the law since the president ignored the Senate’s decision rejecting the consulta. The day before, the national civil registrar, Hernán Penagos, requested a formal legal opinion from the courts before proceeding to organize the consulta. The Council of State’s decision was the consulta’s death knell. The government’s reaction to it was fairly muted—Petro grumbled that the Council of State didn’t have jurisdiction but that he ‘accepts the decisions, but doesn’t share it’, and that Congress would have the final say by adopting the labour reform.
Just as Petro killed the decretazo, in his tweet he landed another bombshell, announcing that in the 2026 elections a ballot will be distributed to convene a constituent assembly. This is, once again, pretty clearly against the constitution/law and is not the way to get a constituent assembly. It follows the same way in which the impetus for the 1991 constituent assembly was given through the student-led séptima papeleta (seventh ballot) movement in the March 1990 elections. Interior minister Armando Benedetti, explaining the proposal, has called it the octava papeleta (eighth ballot)1. Benedetti and Petro have confusingly tried to ‘clarify’ that the government is not convening a constituent assembly, that the next government would need to carry out the mandate of a constituent assembly or that the constituent assembly would repeal the 1991 constitution. Petro will remind us all that the 1991 constituent assembly was also ‘unconstitutional’ in this sense because the 1886 constitution didn’t provide any means for a constituent assembly, and that the séptima papeleta movement created a de facto situation which was legalized by the government through a state of siege decree that was ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court at the time. However, the current constitution does provide a procedure to convene a constituent assembly, one that invariably goes through Congress, and the octava papeleta, designed to bypass Congress and go directly to the people, is clearly not the legal way to do it.
This isn’t the first time that Petro causes such a commotion by talking about a constituyente: he did so last year, and raised the specter again when he signed the decretazo on June 11. His new justice minister, Eduardo Montealegre, whose job seems to be providing legal ‘justifications’ for Petro’s latest whims, had talked about a ‘popular initiative constituent assembly’ and claimed that the alleged systematic ‘institutional blockade’ had rendered certain key aspects of the 1991 constitution unsustainable. The labour reform’s adoption, of course, belies the government’s ‘institutional blockade’ narrative.
The fracas caused by the octava papeleta almost obscured the significance of the labour reform’s adoption, as everyone was talking about the constituyente again. While the government could have chosen to take the win on the labour reform and use it as an opportunity to make peace with Congress, to lower the tone of the overheated political rhetoric, it has instead ratcheted things up a notch (again) with the octava papeleta. As I’ve written before, the idea of the constituyente symbolizes Petro’s opponents greatest fears (and preconceived notions) about him—his authoritarian temperament, his scant respect for the rule of law and democratic institutions and his alleged castrochavista aspirations.
The octava papeleta, however, is little more than Petro’s latest gambit to keep up the pre-electoral popular mobilization (of his base) now that the consulta is history. Just as the Pacto is struggling to find a strong candidate, define how it’ll choose its candidate, who it’ll ally with or decide on its congressional list, the octava papeleta could help mobilize the left’s electorate, as an electoral issue that could unite the left-wing electorate in 2026. The latest idea also helps the government shift attention and media narratives away from more inconvenient topics: scandals, the economic situation, the attack against Miguel Uribe and so forth.
The pension reform survives (conditionally)
In what was perhaps the most anticipated judicial decision of 2025, the Constitutional Court returned the pension reform to the House of Representatives to repeat its fourth and final debate, correcting a procedural irregularity. The Court has given the House 30 working days to do this, and has suspended the law’s entry into force, scheduled for July 1, until then.
The pension reform was, until the labour reform, the government’s only major social reform to have been adopted by Congress. Its final adoption by the lower house on June 14, 2024 was celebrated as a momentous victory for the government and its allies in Congress, and has since been presented as a law that will provide an inclusive and dignified pension for senior citizens and allow poor seniors to finally receive a basic non-contributory monthly pension. For more details on the pension reform itself and how it changes Colombia’s pension system, please read my article from last year.
However, this victory was clouded and complicated by the manner in which it was adopted, in a rushed pupitrazo (rapid adoption of a bill without proper debate).
Last year, in a time crunch—it was June 14, and the bill needed to be passed into law by June 20 at the latest—the government and its allies in the House were worried that things weren’t going at the right pace, even though it had a secure majority in the House. The opposition had worked to prolong and hinder debate (with recusals, legal impediments, over 500 amendments) and the open debate and votes on articles and amendments was taking time, and time was running out. To cut short a debate that threatened to be (too) long and avoid any further complications in a conciliation process, the government and its allies proposed a motion to adopt the text approved by the Senate. After just an hour or so of debate, the motion was adopted with 86 votes in favour and 32 against (69 abstentions or absences).
The government had previously consulted with lawyers and other experts to ensure that this pupitrazo was legal, respecting the basic principles of congressional debate. Nevertheless, the pupitrazo was very controversial, loudly denounced by opposition and independent representatives as an egregious violation of the democratic principles of deliberation and bicameralism, cutting off proper debate and discussion of the text by the House. Several members of Congress immediately challenged the constitutionality of the new law, and many warned that it was a procedural irregularity that’d be struck down by the Court. Most of the 100+ legal challenges against the law, like the one presented by CD senator Paloma Valencia, claimed that the law’s adoption was undemocratic and unconstitutional, because the House avoided debate, without proper deliberation. By the time of the pupitrazo, the House had debated and adopted only 15% of the reform, and there never was a broad deliberation on the contents of the Senate’s text and its differences from the text put before the House’s consideration. The government and others, including Inspector General Gregorio Eljach, considered that there was sufficient debate, over three consecutive days, and the Senate’s text was already published and known.
Paloma Valencia’s challenge landed in the hands of Jorge Enrique Ibáñez, a conservative magistrate who has been the most consistently ‘anti-Petro’ vote on the court. In February, the media reported that Ibáñez’s draft ruling proposed that the pension reform be struck down in its entirety for those procedural errors. Because of an internal mistake by the Court, Ibáñez was forced to table it again in May but his opinion remain unchanged. At the opposite end, Vladimir Fernández, a magistrate nominated by Petro who’d been Petro’s legal secretary, was in favour of greenlighting the law. With the law scheduled to enter into force on July 1, the Court worked to speed up its decision.
For the Court, the point at stake was whether or not the procedural errors in the last debate are correctable or not. There was no perfect precedent for this sort of case, although there are similar cases. La Silla Vacía reported (on the day of the decision) that a majority was inclined towards the consensual, pragmatic option of returning the law to the House to correct the procedural errors. That’s what the Court had done in 2024, when it ordered that some articles of Petro’s national development plan (PND) be returned to the Senate to correct mistakes in the conciliation process.
The Court’s ruling was ultimately unanimous, an unexpected outcome but likely reflecting their desire for a consensual decision. The Court’s decision, as mentioned, returns the law to the House and orders the president of the House to correct the procedural mistake by once again submitting to debate and vote the motion to adopt the Senate’s text. It gives the House 30 working days to do so, counting only days when the House sits in regular or extraordinary sessions. In case conciliation (between different texts) is necessary, the Court gives more time: an entire legislative term (one year). The Court hasn’t ruled on the reform’s constitutionality yet—it will only do so once the House notifies that it has complied. The law’s entry into force, save for two articles, is suspended until the Court rules on the law’s constitutionality and Congress may decide upon a new date for its entry into force.
“The pension reform has been saved,” Petro celebrated on Twitter afterwards. The government and the Pacto celebrated the Court’s decision as a victory, even though it’s only (at best) a partial victory, given the expectation that the reform would be struck down. The opposition, meanwhile, appeared despondent. Paloma Valencia (the plaintiff in this case) was ‘very disappointed’ by the decision and claimed that it ‘mocked’ the opposition by giving 30 more days to a bill that had arrived dead in the House (only 6 days to be approved when it landed in the plenary in 2024). Valencia and others also alleged that the government ‘bought’ this reform, referring to the bribes paid to congressmen, including the then-presidents of the Senate and House (Iván Name and Andrés Calle, both imprisoned since May), with the UNGRD scandal. Representatives like Katherine Miranda, Cathy Juvinao and Jennifer Pedraza, who had at the time all loudly denounced the pupitrazo and warned of the irregularities therein, collected their accolades.
Petro asked the House to ‘thoroughly discuss’ and adopt the Senate’s text anew. Given that Congress’ regular sessions for the current legislative term ended on June 20, interior minister Armando Benedetti announced that the government will call extraordinary sessions in both houses to discuss and adopt the pension reform again. The government hopes that this will be a quick formality, with Sanguino even setting the wildly unrealistic goal of starting the implementation from July 1. Returning the reform to the House, however, means that there’s a possibility that some parts of it will be modified, which adds to existing uncertainty about the transition to the new pension system.
La Silla Vacía wrote that the Court’s decision gives the government the chance to properly prepare the implementation of the new system, given that it wasn’t ready because of delays in the transition. Moreover, Petro’s landmark promise of a non-contributory ‘solidarity pillar’ guaranteeing a monthly pension of about 230,000 pesos to 2.5-3 million seniors living in poverty, remains effectively unfunded with no money guaranteed for it in the budget.
The return of Alfredo Saade
Alfredo Saade, a controversial evangelical leader, lands in the government as Petro’s new chief of staff.
Saade is an evangelical ‘leader’ who participated in the Pacto’s 2022 presidential primary, only to win all of 0.4% of the vote (around 21,000 votes). Saade is a charlatan—he calls himself a pastor despite not leading any church and has no real ‘leadership’ in the Christian evangelical community—and a political chameleon who was active in right-wing parties like CD and CR just a few years before joining the Pacto. He has always been disliked and distrusted by most of the left for his anti-abortion and anti-LGBT+ views. Despite clearly having no political worth to speak of, Saade has remained relevant by turning into a professional agitator and Petro sycophant. In October 2023, Petro appointed him to lead a new water mangement agency for La Guajira, but he soon found himself out of a job when the Constitutional Court struck down the state of emergency decree that had created that office. He has spread fake news—like claiming to be a ‘witness’ to a supposed plot to poison the president—and aired radical, authoritarian opinions. In recent months, the attention-seeking Saade, who said he was running for president, called on Petro to close Congress, convene a constituent assembly, censor the media, shut down Twitter/X for six months and seek reelection. In a recent interview, Saade explained that he became a petrista when he realized that “Jesus Christ in the streets was what Gustavo Petro does.”
The job of chief of staff is, on paper, a relatively important and high-ranking one, working in the presidential office (Dapre). Under Petro, the importance of the office has depended a lot on Petro. It has been held since February by Armando Benedetti, who only really held it for a month before being promoted further to interior minister, where he is now the most powerful man in cabinet. Until June 2023, it was held by Laura Sarabia, who was seen as Petro’s right-hand woman and gatekeeper at the time. Petro himself, in February, had tweeted that the office ‘didn’t exist’. Saade’s job also invariably overlaps with that of Angie Rodríguez, the director of the Dapre since February who has become an influential figure in the presidency’s inner circle.
Saade certainly isn’t coming to do some administrative job, but rather to continue as a professional agitator, stirring the pot. On June 19, he posted a picture of him with Petro, with the caption constituyente ya!, holding the red and black guerra a muerte flag that’s become a (controversial) part of Petro’s symbolism of late. He’s shared pictures of Petro’s June 21 rally in Medellín (ostensibly held to celebrate the labour reform, but instead all attention was on the fact that he invited incarcerated gang leaders on stage with him) with the messages constituyente ya! and Reelección! Reelección! Reelección!.
The media has described him as the latest member of Petro’s loyalist ‘praetorian guard’ alongside Benedetti and Montealegre. El Espectador’s editorial wrote that his appointment revealed how Petro has “opted to surround himself with unfiltered and unscrupulous loyalists, even if this compromises the democratic principles he claims to defend” and that the president appears “entrenched, rewarding the loyal supporters who were there from the start.”
March of silence
On June 15, over 100,000 Colombians took to the streets in a ‘march of silence’ (marcha del silencio), in repudiation of the assassination attempt against presidential pre-candidate and CD senator Miguel Uribe on June 7 and in defence of democracy.
The march was organized by uribismo, right-wing presidential candidate Vicky Dávila and leading political leaders from the Conservatives (Efraín Cepeda), Liberals, CR and La U. The organizers said that the march was in defence of democratic institutions and in rejection of violence, terrorism and fear. They said it was silent, meditative march without partisan flags, aggressive messages and electoral proselytizing.
The name is a reference to the marcha del silencio of February 7, 1948, organized by Liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán to denounce the political violence in the country, with participants required to keep silent in protest and mourning for the victims of violence.
The marches were a resounding success nationwide: around 70,000 people in Bogotá, 50,000 in Medellín, 30,000 in Bucaramanga and thousands more in other major cities. It was joined by centrist presidential hopefuls like Claudia López, Sergio Fajardo and Juan Manuel Galán, as well as journalists, political commentators and business leaders (like Bruce MacMaster, president of the ANDI). It was a massive expression of solidarity with Miguel Uribe, who remains hospitalized more than two weeks after the attempt on his life in Bogotá. Fuerza Miguel! was, by far, the most common slogan on participants’ banners. But, unsurprisingly, political/electoral messages were never far away and the march was also a show of strength by the opposition against Petro. Mixed in with prayers and well wishes for Uribe were attacks against Petro, held responsible for inciting hatred, fueling political violence, attacking democratic institutions or supporting criminals over law-abiding citizens. Loud cries of ‘Petro out!’ (¡Fuera Petro!) were heard in many places. Many of those who took to the streets blame Petro for allowing Colombia to return to the dark days of the 1980s and 1990s and of having creating a fertile ground for political violence with his bellicose rhetoric and lax attitude towards illegal armed groups.
The success of the march of silence was a blow to Petro on one of the most symbolic terrains for him, the street. Petro sees the 2021 national protests as the real origin of his popular mandate and, since elected, he has repeatedly called the people to the streets, looking to the ‘people’ to reinforce his ‘popular mandate’ against the ‘institutional blockade’ his political agenda has faced from other branches of government. With some exceptions, the various rallies, marches and demonstrations organized or sponsored by the government have kind of fallen flat, drawing relatively small (though not insignificant) crowds. The government has relied on the traditionally left-wing organized labour (like Fecode, the teachers’ union), indigenous movements from southwestern Colombia and public sector contract workers to fill the streets. The opposition has often pejoratively described participants in the pro-Petro events as ‘prepaid’ marchers (with rather racist undertones when it comes to indigenous groups). Therefore, the success of the opposition—with a more spontaneous, less coordinated and centralized event—is a blow to Petro.
Petro, quite opportunistically, tried to claim some credit for the success of the marcha del silencio, tweeting a picture with the message ‘success in the plaza of Bogotá, a people united for peace.’ Petro and others denounced the harassment of a RTVC (public broadcaster) journalist during the march in Bucaramanga. Under Petro’s presidency, the public broadcaster RTVC has turned into a quasi-propaganda channel at the service of the government—and, sadly, its journalists have often been (unfairly) on the receiving line of opponents’ anger during such anti-Petro events.
Miguel Uribe remains hospitalized in serious condition. The latest medical update from the hospital, on June 24, reported that he has received treatments to ‘deescalate’ his critical phase to a ‘subacute’ phase. On June 16, he was rushed to surgery following an intracerebral hemorrhage. The criminal investigation into the attack against him has made progress. Four people have now been arrested—the hitman, the driver of the vehicle that dropped off the shooter, the woman who gave the weapon to the shooter and a man responsible for picking up several people involved in the attack. More people are believed to be involved in the actual attack. However, it’s not yet clear who wanted to kill him and why.
In other news
On June 22, 57 soldiers were kidnapped by civilians under pressure of the FARC dissidents in the Cañón del Micay region of Cauca. The soldiers were held captive by the ‘Carlos Patiño front’ of the FARC ‘Estado Mayor Central’ (EMC) dissidents led by alias ‘Mordisco’. This war-torn, coca-producing mountainous region of Cauca, particularly El Plateado, is the stronghold of the ‘Mordisco’ dissidents and the state has struggled to regain control of El Plateado despite repeated operations. Defence minister Pedro Sánchez, a retired air force general, accused the dissidents of instrumentalizing the local population through threats and intimidation. All 57 soldiers were released on June 23 following a military operation, without a single shot fired, and some who participated in the kidnapping were caught.
Three parties—Nuevo Liberalismo, Dignidad y Compromiso and MIRA—announced the formation of an electoral coalition, ¡Ahora Colombia!, for the 2026 congressional elections. Nuevo Liberalismo is the party of the Galán brothers, led by Juan Manuel Galán (his brother, Carlos Fernando Galán is currently mayor of Bogotá). Dignidad y Compromiso is the party of 2018/2022 presidential candidate Sergio Fajardo (who is running again in 2026) and former senator Jorge Enrique Robledo (who is running for Senate again in 2026). The MIRA is a right-wing Christian evangelical ‘testimonial party’, the political arm of the Church of God Ministry of Jesus Christ International, currently led by senator Manuel Virgüez Piraquive, the nephew of the church’s leader María Luisa Piraquive. Nuevo Liberalismo and Dignidad y Compromiso are centrist/liberal parties, leaving MIRA as the odd man out in this coalition, which has already gotten a lot of criticism online. Fajardo has admitted that the parties think differently on certain issues, but minimizes these disagreements. The three parties have made clear that the coalition only holds for the congressional elections, with no obligations for the presidential election. In other words, the three parties are running together in order to cross the 3% threshold (and save their separate party status). The 2026 coalition calculations are underway!
Benedetti’s reference is cheap political marketing but also nonsense. The séptima papeleta was named that way because, in 1990, voters would vote using privately printed ballot papers (called papeletas) with each party/faction’s candidates on them; there were six offices being filled in the 1990 elections, and the ‘seventh ballot’ was an unofficial one put in ballot boxes. Today, since the 1991 constitution, there’s a single ballot—the tarjetón—for each office being filled that day (the tarjetones are colour-coded based on the office). So the papeleta doesn’t exist anymore. In March 2026, any (unofficial) ballot for a constituent assembly would be the ‘fourth ballot’—after the ballots for Senate, House and the presidential primaries (consultas) that’ll be held that day.