Petro's constituent assembly: A divisive but impossible delusion
Petro raised the spectre of a constituent assembly, awakening his critics' greatest fears about him. But his idea is a nearly impossible delusion.
On March 15 President Gustavo Petro raised the spectre of a national constituent assembly if the current constitution cannot be applied. This is one of Petro’s most divisive and disquieting proposals, awakening his opponents and critics’ greatest, deep-held fears about him. However, given the political and legal realities, Petro’s idea is a nearly impossible delusion which won’t result in anything, besides increasing polarization and political conflict.
Petro’s constituent assembly
Petro’s latest big idea came at the end of a long speech in Cali on March 15, speaking to the Minga (indigenous communities, social movements and other organizations from Cauca) and sympathizers at the Momumento a la Resistencia. The location was symbolic: the Momumento a la Resistencia is a community-built monument commemorating the victims of the 2019 and 2021 estallido social in Puerto Rellena/Puerto Resistencia, the emblematic focal point of the protests in Cali. Petro has repeatedly credited the protests and ‘popular resistance’ for finally propelling him to the presidency in 2022.
At the end of his speech, Petro sent his warning: “if the institutions […] are not capable of living up to the social reforms, which the people through their vote decreed, demanded, commanded and ordered” then it is not the people that will go quietly but the institutions that will change. Therefore, if the government is prevented from applying the constitution, then there must be a National Constituent Assembly. The constituent assembly, according to Petro, would need to transform the institutions so that they obey the people’s mandate.
Throughout his speech, Petro claimed that they want to overthrow him, that the establishment and the rich hate him and that they don’t let him govern. He called on Congress to respect the people’s vote and on a popular mobilization to defend his reforms. This has been Petro’s rhetoric for nearly a year, ramped up over the first three months of 2024.
It stems from Petro’s growing frustration with the difficulties to implement his agenda. His ambitious reforms are all running aground in Congress—the healthcare reform is in death throes (days before, on Mar. 12, nine of the fourteen senators of the seventh commission announced they’d vote to kill it), the pension reform is hardly doing better. His big promises are having a very hard time being translated into tangible realities. Hopes for any major results in his ‘total peace’ vision are rapidly fading away. The government has struggled to respond to people’s real concerns (security, jobs, cost of living etc.) in part because of Petro’s obsession with secondary issues (the Bogotá metro, his incessant tweeting about the war in Gaza). Petro feels attacked on all sides with the investigations into 2022 campaign finance irregularities and his son Nicolás’ scandal. Several scandals and controversies have weakened the government and disrupted its narrative in a year that was supposed to be all about implementing his program and fulfilling promises. This has all rekindled Petro’s siege mentality and he’s fallen back on an old narrative of political persecution and victimization.
Instead of taking any responsibility, Petro has instead blamed everyone else. In Cali, Petro said his biggest mistake was naively inviting ‘centrist presidential candidates’ to the cabinet (a reference to short-lived education minister Alejandro Gaviria and indirectly the other centrist liberals in his first cabinet). He has blamed them, the technocrats and the bureaucracy for holding back his agenda and government inertia (in recent weeks, Petro has ‘purged’ a lot of technocrats from the government). Petro is certain that ‘the establishment’ and the ‘far-right’ are conspiring to destroy him, repeating theories of a golpe blando (soft coup) or ruptura institucional (institutional breakdown). He fears that he’ll be removed from power like Pedro Castillo (Peru), Dilma (Brazil) and others.
Although his approval rating is at 30-40% in most polls, Petro believes that the street remains behind him and that popular mobilization can put pressure on the other branches of government to go along with him. He does retain the support of a radical left-wing activist base, as well as parts of organized labour and the indigenous movement. The February 8 protests, incited and and riled up by Petro before getting out of hand, showed that Petro can still mobilize parts of his base to rally in his defence and adopt his arguments wholesale. The events of February 8, somewhat spun out of proportion by right-wing media, reinforced his opponents’ belief that Petro is a danger to democracy and institutional stability, with his radical rhetoric jeopardizing the separation of powers.
An old idea…
The idea of a constituent assembly isn’t new—or unique to Petro and the left. Uribismo has on various occasions proposed constituent assemblies. In 2020, after Álvaro Uribe’s house arrest, infuriated uribistas proposed a constituent assembly to reform the judiciary (accused of left-wing bias and political persecution against Uribe). Before that, Uribe and other uribistas (including future president Iván Duque) had proposed constituent assemblies to reform Congress, the judiciary or to modify the peace agreement with the FARC. Uribismo’s opponents always suspected that the real goal of an uribista constituent assembly would be to modify the articulito and allow Uribe to run for a third term.
Certain sectors of the left have supported the idea of constituent assembly. The late Piedad Córdoba’s left-wing Marcha Patriótica called for a constituent assembly in 2014. The former FARC guerrilla, which had been ‘excluded’ from the 1991 constituent assembly, had long demanded a constituent assembly and wanted the 2016 peace agreement to be ratified by a constituent assembly—which the government steadfastly refused. The ELN continues to demand a constituent assembly, and gave it unwelcome support to Petro’s proposal.
In 2017, Gustavo Petro said that, if elected president, he’d call a referendum to convene a constituent assembly, which he said would be ‘limited’ to carry out his intended reforms. The unpopularity of this idea and the fears it raised would force Petro to forget it. In 2018, to get the endorsements of Antanas Mockus and Claudia López between the two rounds of the the presidential election, Petro signed, on marble, a list of “twelve commandments” whose second point was “I will not convene a national constituent assembly.” In 2022, Petro repeatedly promised that there would not be a constituent assembly and that his program would be to defend the 1991 constitution.
A controversial idea
Petro’s idea is extremely controversial and politically divisive.
The idea of a constituent assembly evokes chavista Venezuela, particularly Maduro’s 2017-2020 ‘constituent assembly’, and other constituent processes in Latin America during the ‘red wave’ of the 2000s (Ecuador, Bolivia). Petro’s proposal awakened his opponents and critics’ greatest, deep-held fears about him. His critics have long worried about his erratic, mercurial populist strongman temptations and his scant regard for institutions and constitutional norms when cornered. For the right, it proves correct their old castrochavista nightmares. Like everywhere in Latin America, the mere mention of constituent assembly or constitutional reform by a sitting president raises fears that they want to perpetuate themselves in power and do away with term limits, even though Petro has repeatedly denied any desire to be reelected in 2026. However, since 2015, the ban on reelection can only be repealed by citizen-initiated referendum or a constituent assembly…
However, Petro’s proposal is not illegal or undemocratic: it is a perfectly legal and democratic mechanism, laid out in the constitution. The concerns are largely about his real or supposed intentions, and his desire to use a constituent assembly to circumvent Congress.
Despite its imperfections and real problems, the 1991 constitution is cherished by most. It is the first Colombian constitution that was written by a popularly-elected body and indirectly the product of a grassroots popular movement. It was the result of a real consensus and agreement between the major political groups in the country, including the demobilized M-19 guerrilla, a special moment of national consensus that’s exceedingly rare in Colombia and Latin America. In contrast to the old constitution it replaced, the 1991 constitution was more pluralist and democratic. It is praised for its extensive protection of a wide range of fundamental rights, including second- and third-generation rights, and the mechanisms created to allow people to demand their rights (most famously the tutela). The 1991 constitution was a major step forward, but it remains an aspirational document. It hasn’t been able to resolve Colombia’s biggest problems, and many of its objectives have not been fulfilled.
Everybody agrees that the current constitution and its institutions have real problems and needs major reforms—to the judiciary, the political-electoral system and more. Few, however, believe that the solution to these problems is a new constitution. Unlike in Chile, Colombian protesters in 2019 and 2021 didn’t demand a new constitution, but rather that the terms of the 1991 constitution be fulfilled. Petro, in 2022, often said the same thing.
Colombia in 1991, with Chile in 2022/2023 as the counterexample, show the importance of national consensus when drafting new constitutions to unite a country, rather than one side seeking to impose its ideological vision. In the current political climate in Colombia, a constituent assembly would likely lack the spirit of national unity and consensus-building and devolve into one-sided, ideological battles.
Reactions to Petro’s idea were predominantly negative. Unsurprisingly, opposition politicians mostly criticized Petro and his ‘destructive’ or ‘authoritarian’ intentions. Álvaro Uribe bemoaned the destructiveness of ‘constitutional instability’, María Fernanda Cabal accused Petro of undermining democracy and of showing his ‘dictatorial delusions’, Fico Gutiérrez said that Petro had opened a “dangerous floodgate for Colombian democracy” and showed his dictatorial temperament to perpetuate himself in power and Paloma Valencia echoed the theme of ‘destruction’ (she didn’t mention that she enthusiastically called for a constituent assembly in 2020). Iván Duque, who as recently as 2019 supported a constituent assembly, claimed that Colombian democracy was under threat with the “desire to impose a failed model through a constituent assembly.” Petro, who can’t help but bark back at his arch-nemesis, responded in the only way he knows how: referring (again) to police violence against protesters in 2021, saying that this ‘bloodthirsty model’ was the only which had failed.
From Venezuela, Leopoldo López called on Colombians to protect their democracy, warning that Chávez’s 1999 constituent assembly was the beginning of the “destruction of democracy and the economy.”
The president of the Senate, Iván Name (Green), who has been a vocal critic of the president, forcefully responded that Congress would not accept threats.
Former Bogotá mayor Claudia López, one of the putative favourites in 2026, said that Petro only wants to “sow chaos, division and polarization” and feed his “vain megalomania.” Centrist senator Humberto de la Calle, who represented the government in the 1991 constituent assembly as César Gaviria’s interior minister, wrote that Petro’s argument was weak and that the problem was not the constitution but rather the way of governing.
Even some of Petro’s supporters disagreed with the idea. Antonio Navarro Wolff, the last surviving co-president of the 1991 constituent assembly (for the AD M-19), tweeted that a constituent assembly doesn’t seem necessary at this time. Former president Ernesto Samper (1994-1998), the only former president who has supported Petro’s policies, said that a constituent assembly wasn’t necessary to pass Petro’s reforms and fears that a constituent assembly would be dominated by the right who would adopt a right-wing constitution, citing the recent example of Chile. On the left, several voices have expressed concern that a constituent assembly could entail setbacks for the rights and freedoms conquered thanks the 1991 constitution. Samper said that a constituent assembly would give the country to the right.
From an academic perspective, left-leaning professor Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir says that a constituent assembly is inappropriate and risky, arguing that, unlike in Venezuela in the 1990s or Bolivia in the 2000s, the current constitution is not ‘archaic’, and that modifying the 1991 constitution under the current circumstances would put rights and freedoms at risk. Legal scholar Rodrigo Uprimny believes that the idea is “unnecessary, untimely, contradictory, unviable.”
An interesting endorsement of Petro’s idea came from… former vice president Germán Vargas Lleras, who is enjoying a new political resurgence as an opposition leader, who effectively called Petro’s bluff. Vargas Lleras challenged Petro to a constituent assembly so that the people can defeat him and determine the country’s path. However, few (if any) opposition politicians or supporters want to play Vargas Lleras’ 3D chess and most rather saw his move as self-interested, to impose himself as the leading opposition figure.
A nearly impossible idea
The political reactions were arguably all a bit hysterical and too alarmist, for one simple reason: Petro’s idea of a constituent assembly, while perfectly legal, is nearly impossible in practice.
The Colombian constitution can be amended by Congress, the people through referendum or a constituent assembly (article 374). The procedures for convening a constituent assembly are detailed by article 376:
By means of a law approved by a majority of the members of both houses, Congress may stipulate that the people by popular vote decide whether to convoke a Constituent Assembly with the jurisdiction, term, and composition that the same law shall determine.
It shall be understood that the people have convoked an assembly if at least one-third of members of the electoral rolls approve the convocation. The Assembly shall be elected by a direct vote of the citizens in an election that may not coincide with another. Upon the election, Congress’s ordinary powers to reform the Constitution shall be suspended for the period specified for the Assembly to complete its work. The Assembly shall adopt its own rules of procedure.
This is a long and complicated process. Petro has neither the political majorities (in Congress and the population) or the time to achieve it.
The first step is congressional adoption of a law convoking a referendum on a constituent assembly. This law would define the jurisdiction (subject matters), term and makeup of the assembly. The adoption of this law requires an absolute majority in both houses (95 representatives and 53 senators), rather than the simple majority required for the adoption of most laws. Petro theoretically has a thin absolute majority in the House, but certainly doesn’t have one in the Senate, and in either case it is dependent on the Liberals and the Greens, who are unlikely to go along with a constituent assembly.
Once this law is adopted but before a referendum is held, it is subject to mandatory review by the Constitutional Court. The Court would only rule on the basis of procedural errors, and could only declare it unconstitutional for violating requirements established in the title pertaining to constitutional reforms. However, the Constitutional Court has adopted a broad understanding of its powers of judicial review for constitutional amendments, notably with the doctrine of “substitution of the constitution.” It is unclear how the Constitutional Court would rule on the issue of convening a constituent assembly. In the past, the Court has held that the actions of the primary or original constituent power (the people) are foundational and escape judicial control, and has therefore imposed no limitations to its power.
Two to six months after the Court’s decision, a referendum on convening a constituent assembly would be held. Voters would vote yes or no to convening a constituent assembly, and, separately, approve the topics that would be within the assembly’s jurisdiction. To convene a constituent assembly, the ‘yes’ vote would need to be equal to at least a third of registered voters, or over 13.4 million votes as of 2024. In 2022, in a high turnout election, Petro won 11.29 million votes in the second round. Not only would turnout in a referendum would be lower (it was 32.1% in the anti-corruption referendum and 37.4% in the 2016 peace plebiscite), Petro’s constituent assembly would need to have the support of all of his 2022 runoff voters and convince another 2.1 million more. As things currently stand, that’s not happening.
If for whatever reasons things go this far, two to six months after the referendum, elections for the constituent assembly would be held. This election cannot coincide with any other election. The constituent assembly’s term would be defined by the law originally passed by Congress. During this time, Congress’ powers to amend the constitution would be suspended. The assembly would adopt its own rules of procedure. In 1991, the constituent assembly declared itself to have unlimited power and not subject to judicial review, as the manifestation of popular sovereignty. The 1991 constituent assembly was in session for five months (from Feb. 5 to July 4). There is no legal requirement that the new constitution be ratified by referendum, but it could be (as happened in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile).
It is estimated that the entire process would take about two years. Petro’s term ends in 28 months.
Petro’s goal
What’s Petro’s end goal in all this? Since March 15, Petro has simultaneously backed down from his initial proposal while escalating the rhetoric and confrontation.
After the uproar created by his announcement in Cali, Petro gave more details about his idea in an interview with El Tiempo on March 18. The president claimed that he didn’t talk of a constituent assembly to change the 1991 constitution, but rather to properly implement it. He lists off six priority topics—implementing the 2016 peace agreement, access to healthcare, pensions and water, judicial reform, territorial reorganization, climate change and peace and reconciliation (in a tweet he later added other topics like agrarian reform, public education, monetary policy and public campaign financing). These things could be all done by way of regular constitutional reforms.
In confusing and hyperbolic terms, Petro blames a de facto mafioso ‘political regime’ and ‘paramilitary governance’ for not applying the 1991 constitution and not carrying out the necessary reforms, and that a ‘constituent process’ is necessary to apply the constitution and ‘purify’ institutions in the public interest. It’s unclear why a constituent assembly would miraculously solve all these problems.
In the interview, Petro kind of walked back his constituent assembly idea. His ‘constituent process’, basically a euphemism for ‘popular mobilization’, includes the ‘organization of municipal committees’, with the people called upon to mobilize and exercise ‘constituent power.’ He mentions cabildos abiertos, an old form of local popular participation with colonial roots which exists in Colombian legislation as a form of public assemblies at the municipal and departmental level. Local citizens (0.5% of registered voters locally) may petition for an issue to be discussed or a public official be questioned at a public meeting of the local council or departmental assembly, but cabildos abiertos in Colombia can’t even propose local ordinances or resolutions, let alone modify the constitution!
Petro was noncommittal and evasive about the actual legal process for a constituent assembly, claiming that there are “different paths” (there aren’t) and that it’s an issue of ‘popular forces’ rather than majorities. In pure populist language, he says that if the people decides, the established institutions must accept as they are subordinated to the people.
Petro denied any interest in reelection and assured that a constituent assembly would not change the rules on land expropriation.
The presidency released an ‘ABC of the constituent process’ summarizing Petro’s interview and later a graphic, which was widely mocked online for saying that a constituent assembly is not changing the constitution.
The interview (and later tweet) revealed that the real intention of Petro’s constituent process is popular agitation in favour of himself and his policies, with eyes set on ensuring the continuity of his political project in 2026. Since February 2023, Petro has tried (and mostly failed) to spark a broad popular mobilization in his favour, a show of force to show the other branches that ‘the people’ support his reforms. Most of these pro-government demonstrations largely flopped, almost always mobilizing smaller crowds than the opposition’s anti-Petro protests. Petro’s constituent process is the latest and most audacious attempt at galvanizing ‘the people’ behind him and his agenda, against the ‘established powers’.
Nevertheless, according to La Silla Vacía, the social movements on which Petro relies to organize and coordinate his grassroots ‘constituent process’ are cautious and skeptical about the idea. Organized labour, student unions, social movements, peasants’ organizations, indigenous and Afro-Colombian organizations and other movements have planned for mobilizations on April 9 (Jorge Eliécer Gaitán’s assassination and national day of remembrance for victims of the conflict) and May 1 (Labour Day). Their reading of the political climate, however, appears more realistic: they know that they cannot recreate the environment of the 2019 and 2021 protests, and worry that a constituent assembly could backfire or distract from their demands.
As part of his decentralized ‘governing from the regions’, in the Caribbean—where Petro and his cabinet spend a week ‘governing’ from one region, holding popular assemblies and meetings with local residents—Petro has used these meetings and assemblies as examples of the ‘constituent power of the people’. Giving multiple meanings to the term constituyente, Petro notably told local audiences that the constituyente means: solving fundamental problems, reforms ‘now’, territorial reorganization (modifying departmental and municipal boundaries), giving power to the people, or that popular regional assemblies could be constituent assemblies.
While Petro has deflated the constituent assembly idea, he’s also escalated and radicalized his own rhetoric. He has become particularly fond of his term ‘paramilitary governance’. He tweeted that a lot of those who opposed his constituent process are “lovers of paramilitary governance”—unhelpful rhetoric that only increases polarization. Iván Name accused Petro of “threatening democracy” and challenged him to bring him a law convening a constituent assembly. Name warned Petro that if he was thinking about “the noises of sabres”, that the “weapons of the armed forces belong to the nation, not to a government.” Petro rejected Name’s insinuations and tweeted that Congress would convene the constituent assembly at the “appropriate moment.”
With his rhetoric and behaviour, Petro seems to have thrown in the towel on getting his reforms in Congress. The healthcare reform is likely dead, and the main victim of Petro’s constituent process could be the pension reform, which remains held in the plenary of the Senate with three more debates needed by the end of June (a very difficult timeline). The death of his main reforms in Congress would provide ammunition to Petro’s populist rhetoric—as a preview, he recently called congressmen who block social reforms to be ‘social egoists’. Nevertheless, interior minister Luis Fernando Velasco, an experienced politician who has been putting out Petro’s fires, has been working to get majorities in Congress for the government’s reforms and allay congressmen’s concerns about the constituent assembly.
With some 2 years and four months left in his term, Petro appears to have chosen a path of confrontation and crisis. With very little progress made over the past year, he seems to have given up on getting his ambitious social reforms through Congress. He’s not entirely wrong in his calculations—if he’s unable to get either the healthcare or pension reforms through Congress by June, then his term’s legislative agenda is basically dead, leaving him with a very meagre legislative record in 2026. To defend his presidency and seek to ensure his political project’s continuity after 2026, Petro will be in campaign mode until 2026, seeking to play up popular anger against corrupt elites and an establishment that hasn’t let him govern and resisted the ‘popular mandate’ for progressive change (his reforms). The lofty talk of a ‘national agreement’ will be forgotten (in Cali, Petro said that it was no longer the time for it), and Petro will spend the remainder of his term dialing up the populist, anti-establishment rhetoric, driving up corrosive political polarization and driving down the levels of political debate to the dumps (of course, the right-wing opposition has also greatly contributed to the pitiful state of political debate).
Colombia continues into a difficult political period characterized by constant confrontation, tensions and inflammatory rhetoric. There won’t be a constituent assembly, but increasingly heated political battles and polarization until 2026.