Year Two
The second legislative year of Congress opened on July 20, with a with a complicated path ahead for Petro's fledgling reformist agenda
The second legislative year of Congress opened on July 20, Colombia’s national day, with a speech by President Gustavo Petro and the election of the new presidents of both houses of Congress. On August 7, Petro marked a year since his inauguration.
Year two looks to be quite complicated for the government. Of its three major social reforms presented in the last congressional session—the healthcare, pension and labour reforms—the first two have only passed their first of four debates, while the labour reform died in June. In April, Petro pulled the plug on his fractious and divided congressional coalition with the traditional parties (Liberals, Conservatives and La U), leaving the government without a stable majority in Congress and reliant on tortuous negotiations with congressmen.
While the government attempts to push through its agenda, they’ll find that politicians’ attention will be elsewhere—on the local and regional elections being held on October 29. The elections are important for many congressmen’s own political structures in their regions, but they’ll also be read as a major electoral test for the unpopular administration. If the government suffers defeats in the biggest cities and departments, as seems likely, their negotiating power with congressmen will be badly damaged.
Year Two of Congress
The Colombian Congress meets for two ordinary sessions in one legislative year (legislatura)—from July 20 to December 16, and from March 16 to June 20. The first session of each legislative year is opened by the President, speaking before a joint session of both houses of Congress.
Unlike in most countries, the congressional leadership is renewed each year (with reelection not permitted). The presiding officers of both houses are elected at the first session on July 20.
Typically, at the start of each new Congress, the main parties agree to divide the presidencies of both houses amongst themselves for the four-year term. The political agreements are respected, with other parties supporting whichever candidate is put forward by the party whose turn it is to hold the presidency.
The presiding officers have quite a bit of power, controlling the agenda and schedule, and can either be of great help to the government’s agenda or real headaches. The government has a clear incentive in ensuring that the presidencies are held by allies who’ll help rather than hinder passage of their agenda.
For the 2023-24 sessions, the presidencies of the Senate and the House fall on the Greens and the Liberals respectively. Both parties are internally divided and struggled to agree on a single candidate.
Defeat(s) in the Senate
In the Senate, the hopelessly divided and fractious Greens finally selected Angélica Lozano in a caucus vote the night before. Lozano won 8 out of 13 votes, but two of her rivals, Inti Asprilla and Iván Name, refused to withdraw their candidacies.
Angélica Lozano, the wife of Bogotá mayor Claudia López, has served nine years in Congress (in the House from 2014 to 2018, and in the Senate since 2018). Often seen as one of the best legislators by ‘opinion leaders’, she’s co-sponsored several bills that have become law and has been one of the party’s most prominent and visible senators. In 2022, she won 83,000 preferential votes. Ideologically, she’s in the centre (or centre-left) of the party, having supported Sergio Fajardo in both 2018 and 2022. Claudia López has had a complicated relationship with Petro, alternating between tacit non-aggression pacts and more open confrontation. Over the past few months, Claudia López and Petro have clashed repeatedly, on issues like the metro or security. There is a long-standing, deep-seated animosity between petristas and claudistas (or centrist Greens), with the former considering the latter to be hypocritical crypto-right-wingers determined to sabotage the government’s reforms (with Claudia López’s 2026 presidential ambitions in the background). Lozano has supported the government, but has also criticized it at times.
Inti Asprilla is one of the most petrista and left-wing senators in the Green caucus. After two terms in the House, Asprilla was elected to the Senate in 2022, with 81,800 preferential votes. Asprilla is the son of the late Guillermo Asprilla, former member of the M-19 and secretary of government in Bogotá (2012-2013) during Petro’s administration. Asprilla has been an ‘activist’ congressman, standing out for his work on issues like the Doña Juana landfill in Bogotá, police brutality and informal street vendors.
Iván Name has been in the Senate since 2010 but he’s kept a low profile, with few legislative achievements to his record. He is from the influential Name family in Barranquilla—he’s the cousin of Partido de la U senator José David Name and the nephew of the late patriarch of the clan, former senator José David Name Terán—but, unlike the rest of his family, his political base is in Bogotá and he’s never had strong support in Barranquilla. Name has been in politics since the 1980s, serving two terms in the House (1982-1986, 1991-1994) and one term on Bogotá’s city council (1994-1997). He was reelected to a fourth term in the Senate last year with 39,500 votes, the fewest preferential votes of any senator in 2022. Although his support is limited, he has a small political base and network. His daughter, María Clara Name, has been a Bogotá city councillor since 2011, while his wife was on the city council from 2001 to 2007. In parallel to his political career, Name’s family has owned several businesses and his relatives have been appointed to several public jobs.
Name is pragmatic and ideologically flexible, but he’s tended to be more conservative than his party and has clashed with Petro and the left several times in the past. In July 2021, during the election for the second vice presidency of the Senate (reserved for the opposition), the traditional parties refused to vote for petrista Gustavo Bolívar and voted blank, forcing the election to be repeated. Name was nominated and elected, infuriating the petristas (Name’s election was invalidated by the Council of State in 2022). Name endorsed Rodolfo Hernández in the runoff last year, going against the bulk of the party. He was one of two Green senators who didn’t vote in favour of the legalization of marijuana in its final debate in the Senate in June (where it was defeated).
Name’s candidacy gathered strength as the opposition (CD, CR) and independent parties (La U, Conservatives) looked to him as a way to send a strong message to Petro, while still technically respecting the deal giving the presidency to the Greens. The government was aware of this, and interior minister Luis Fernando Velasco began lobbying in Lozano’s favour. The Greens put out an official statement confirming their support for Lozano, and calling on Congress to respect the party’s decision.
Through lots of arm twisting, Velasco convinced reluctant Pacto senators to support Lozano and Asprilla to withdraw his candidacy. Begrudgingly, Asprilla gave in and withdrew his candidacy, but not without complaining that it was unjust and lamenting that it was ‘hurtful’ to see the government campaign for Lozano. Online, petrista influencers like Beto Coral who deeply hate Lozano and her wife were very critical of the government backing Lozano.
Name nominated himself in a long-winded and rather bizarre, disjointed and somewhat incoherent speech with lots of hand gestures and voice raising. His speech was so bizarre that many people online speculated that he was drunk… His speech talked about how partidocracia is destroying Western democracies, how democracies need many parties, centralism, federalism, the talents of revolutions and revolutionaries, the boots of the founding fathers, autonomous regions, presidentialism and the dignity of the Senate. He strangely celebrated Pacto congressmen as florituras. His main promise to his peers was to remove time limits on their speeches.
Iván Name was elected president of the Senate with 54 votes against 50 for Lozano, with one invalid vote. The election was by secret ballot, so there’s no way of knowing for sure how senators voted, but political journalists believe that Name most likely received the votes of 14 Conservatives, 13 CD, 11 CR, 10 La U and himself, which would leave five votes unaccounted for. These may have come either from Liberals or unidentified dissidents from the Pacto or the Greens. In the election for the first vice presidency of the Senate, Pacto senator María Jose Pizarro was elected with 55 votes against 48 for Paulino Riascos (a rebellious Pacto senator and thorn in the side of his caucus). Assuming all 50 who voted for Lozano also voted for Pizarro, as is likely, this would leave five senators who voted for Pizarro but didn’t vote for Lozano.
The opposition celebrated Name’s victory as theirs, hugging him to congratulate him. Meanwhile, a sullen interior minister Velasco quickly left the Senate chambers without saying goodbye to anyone. The result was particularly brutal for Velasco, who just the day before told La Silla Vacía in an interview that, “on paper”, the government had majorities in both houses with 65 votes in the Senate and 120 in the House. He also added that electing their ‘friends’ to the presidencies of both houses would be key. Velasco only became interior minister in late April, but this defeat—after spending a lot of political capital on Lozano’s candidacy and twisting arms in the Pacto—is a big blow to his political standing. On July 28, La FM radio said that Petro would shuffle his cabinet again on August 7—a year after his inauguration—and that Velasco was among those in the line of fire. That hasn’t happened (yet), but the rumours confirm that Velasco’s position is quite fragile.
After the result, Velasco said that Name “had the intelligence to put together a coalition of traditional leaders (…) which obviously has a specific force in the Senate.” Velasco’s analysis annoyed Name, who fired back by calling Velasco a “defeated traditional politician” (Velasco served 24 years in Congress from 1998 to 2022). After this small clash, they appeared to reconcile. Velasco tweeted (on July 22), seeking to bury the hatchet.
Yet, even if Velasco and Name can get along, the government won’t have it easy in the Senate. Name has said that the government’s reforms would be approved if Congress judges them ‘convenient’ for the country and that, in any case, the government’s bills would be amended and not adopted as is. While promising ‘guarantees’ and cooperation with the government’s legislative agenda, he’s also trying to appear as a guarantor of the Senate’s independence from the executive.
Name is a pragmatic traditional politician who has managed to play his cards well with previous governments and is used to transactional relationships with other political leaders. Name has some friends in the administration: Petro’s new director of the DAPRE (presidential office), Carlos Ramón González, is the former co-president of the Greens and has known Name for years. Name is also close to former Green senators Jorge Eduardo Londoño (now director of the SENA) and Sandra Ortíz (now presidential adviser for the regions). Name will also use his office to strengthen his political base: his daughter, María Clara Name, is seeking reelection on Bogotá’s city council on October and angling to be the Greens’ top candidate on the list, while Name’s son Iván Name Jr. is being prepped to succeed his father in Congress in 2026.
On August 1, the government suffered another defeat in the Senate: Conservative senator Germán Blanco was elected president of the Senate’s first commission (the most prestigious commission, in charge of constitutional reforms) in spite of previous agreements which should have given the presidency to the Pacto’s Alexander López. However, the opposition and independent parties as well as Green senator ‘Jota Pe’ Hernández broke the agreement and instead voted for Blanco. Velasco said that the agreements were not respected and was a blow to tradition, but, trying to put a brave face on another embarrassing defeat, said that he wasn’t concerned that Blanco would hurt the government’s agenda.
A victory in the House
While the government was defeated in the Senate, it had a much easier victory in the lower house. In the House, presidency for year two was reserved to the Liberal Party.
The Liberals, while still technically part of the governing coalition, are deeply divided between pro-government and anti-government/independent factions, with party leader César Gaviria effectively leading the latter. The government has been taking advantage of these divisions to build a new coalition in Congress without having to negotiate with Gaviria, who has bad relations with Petro. The government has also worked to undermine Gaviria’s leadership in the party, and Velasco—a former Liberal senator and opponent of Gaviria—has been leading the fight against the former president. In El Tiempo, Gaviria complained that Velasco was put in the interior ministry to “entangle him, build up division and to try to knock me down at the convention.” Gaviria also thinks that Velasco was behind the CNE’s recent sanction against the party for not holding a convention since 2020 (although, in a concession to Gaviria, they ordered him to hold a convention within four months rather than immediately).
The Liberal ‘rebels’ close to the government are stronger in the House. In May, La Silla Vacía counted 19 congressmen, including one senator and 18 representatives, who are close to the administration and another seven who could be brought over (5 senators, 2 representatives). There are 13 Liberal senators and 33 representatives.
The battle for the presidency of the House became a proxy war between Gaviria and Velasco. There were three candidates within the party: Córdoba rep. Andrés Calle, Antioquia rep. Julián Peinado and Putumayo rep. Carlos Ardila.
Andrés Calle, first elected in 2018, is one of the most pro-Petro Liberals—he was one of the first Liberal congressman to endorse Petro in 2022, before the first round, and he’s been the caucus’ delegate with the presidency because of his proximity to the administration. Calle comes from a political family in Córdoba—his father was mayor of Montelíbano, and his brother Gabriel is running for governor this year. He’s been under fire for his apparent proximity to corrupt former senators Musa Besaile and Bernardo ‘Ñoño’ Elías. While Calle has said that he doesn’t know either of them “politically”, Besaile’s wife was in Congress on July 20 to help support his candidacy and people online soon found an old picture of him with ‘el Ñoño’ Elías.
Julián Peinado, in contrast, is close to Gaviria and is one of the most anti-government Liberals, often criticizing the administration. He said that Congress needed to be independent of the government and that Calle would not guarantee congressional independence. Putumayo representative Carlos Ardila has been more independent of both the government and Gaviria.
The government, through Velasco, campaigned for Calle, who had majority support within his party’s caucus. Peinado and Ardila withdrew their candidacies before the vote, with Peinado tweeting that the government had blocked his candidacy, adding that it was very dangerous for the country that institutions’ independence was not respected. Calle was easily elected without opposition.
Petro’s speech
Each legislative year is inaugurated by the President, who gives a speech before both houses, a sort of Colombian State of the Union.
Petro, a fine orator who loves long speeches, spoke for nearly two hours, improvised. His speech, while somewhat tailored to his audience, was similar to most of his other speeches: heavily rhetorical, with his political-ideological vision, but short on specific details about his solutions to the problems he identifies. Unlike his predecessors, Petro’s speech didn’t really detail his accomplishments over the past year. He did, however, explain how much work is left to be done on several of his main priorities: reindustrialization, land redistribution, transportation electrification and increasing tourism.
Petro talked at length about the climate crisis, with his apocalyptic vision that the world is on the verge of the sixth extinction, his goal to decarbonize the economy and break with the extractivist economic model, an agrarian reform, social justice and the conflict. He barely discussed his reforms still pending before Congress—the healthcare and pension reforms, talked only a bit more about the labour reform that died in commission last session. However, he announced more reforms: a reform to the mining code, an agrarian reform as well as education and public services reforms.
Petro received a round of applause after he mentioned Colombia’s recent victory at the International Court of Justice in the maritime border dispute with Nicaragua. The ICJ rejected Nicaraguan claims to an extended continental shelf, although Colombia lost the most important round in this dispute in 2012 (when Colombia ‘lost’ 43% of its maritime territory to Nicaragua).
Petro, well aware of the power of nationalism in boosting an unpopular government’s approval ratings, made this July 20 a symbolic show of Colombian sovereignty triumphant. He spent the morning of July 20 in San Andrés, and, getting a bit carried away, tweeted that for the first time in 200 years the country has not lost territory and has defended its sovereignty (he then listed all the other territory lost by past government: the Mosquito coast, Panama, the Monjes archipelago, Amazon rainforest and Caribbean waters).
At the end of Petro’s speech, CD representative Óscar Villamizar yelled out ‘liar!’ when Petro claimed that “the war between the state and the insurgency is ending.” Petro’s bold claim flies in the face of widespread perception that the security situation is worsening.
In closing, Petro returned to his idea of a “national agreement” around broad ambitions like social justice and peace. Here again, however, he was short on details.
The opposition’s response
Since the 2018 opposition statute, parties which have declared themselves in opposition to the government are entitled to a total of 20 minutes to provide responses to the President’s speech. This year, senators María Fernanda Cabal (CD) and David Luna (CR) as well as representatives Erika Sánchez (Liga), Marelen Castillo (Liga) and Daniel Carvalho (Green Oxygen).
Far-right darling María Fernanda Cabal focused on the growing sentiment of insecurity in the cities and regions and criticized the government’s total peace policy, blaming it for an increase in violence and low morale in the armed forces. She said that the government’s slogan, “Colombia Potencia Mundial de la Vida” (Colombia, world power of life) is a “very nice political marketing slogan very far from reality.” Cabal’s speech was conservative: she questioned the government’s climate change and energy transition policies, and reiterated typical right-wing ideas like private property, private investment and law and order.
Cambio Radical senator David Luna’s speech was rather well received. Luna did a good job at emphasizing the wide gap between rhetoric and action/policy implementation, which has always been Petro’s weak point as a leader, asking for “less speeches and more action.” Daniel Carvalho also touched on the same criticism, saying that the government is “squandering an historic opportunity” because of a lack of organization and dialogue. Criticizing the government’s security policies and social reforms, Luna accused the government of restricting people’s freedoms and independence.
Unlike his predecessor, Iván Duque, who usually left the chamber and left his interior minister to listen to the opposition’s response, Petro stayed and listened to the opposition’s responses. Luna thanked him for that.
A difficult road ahead
In the last session, the government’s big legislative agenda largely ran aground, and faces an even more complicated road ahead in the next session.
The government had some important early successes in Congress in the first session (August-December 2022) of the previous legislative year. Its big tax reform was adopted, projected to raise 1.3% of GDP in new revenues in 2023. The ‘total peace law’, the legal framework for the government’s peace strategy, was also adopted. In the last session, the government’s national development plan (PND) – essentially the translation of a government-elect’s campaign promises into law, plus a multi-year investment plan – was adopted, although Petro didn’t get most of the exceptional powers he asked for from it.
However, Petro’s three landmark social reforms—the healthcare reform, the pension reform and the labour reform—have had a much tougher time. The labour reform died after it failed to be approved in commission (first debate) before the end of the last session (June 20). The government has said that it will present the labour reform again, but it may have taken a backseat to other reforms.
The healthcare and pension reforms both survived to continue their way through Congress this session, although both still require three more debates. The healthcare reform was adopted in the seventh commission of the House on May 22, with the support of the Liberals and Partido de la U. However, it got bogged down in the plenary of the House (second debate), as opposition and independent parties’ absenteeism broke the quorum and blocked it from moving forward at all. This was part of a deliberate ‘turtle plan’ by opposition and independent parties to hold up the government’s reforms.
The pension reform was adopted in first debate in the seventh commission of the Senate on June 14, just days before the end of sessions (failure to adopt it by then would have killed it), with just the bare minimum votes (8 out of 14).
The healthcare reform is controversial and faces strong opposition from other party leaders, but it has become the government’s most important bill and after spending so much political capital in defending it, it’s absolutely necessary for the government that it passes. The new health minister, Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo, is an experienced politician, unlike his predecessor, Carolina Corcho, and he’s been willing to negotiate the reform and reach compromises. These negotiations cleared the way for its adoption in commission in May, following concessions to the Liberals and the Partido de la U on some key points. Jaramillo is also more inclined to negotiate with the reform’s main targets, the EPS (the private or public insurers and intermediaries). In dire financial straits themselves, the EPS have an incentive to negotiate some sort of future for themselves in the new healthcare system imagined by the government. Petro is fundamentally opposed to EPS managing public money, so the crux of the reform is eliminating EPS as insurers and financial intermediaries. However, the reform as it stands would allow EPS to survive under another name to manage financial and clinical risk.
The pension reform probably has the best chance of passing. It has proven to be a less controversial reform—there’s broader consensus on the need for a pension reform, and what one should include. Yet, some key points of disagreement remain with other parties and interested parties (private pension fund administrators).
In his speech before Congress, Petro claimed that the only government bill that failed in the last session was the labour reform (and even that one, he said, failed only for procedural reasons). That’s not quite true: the government’s prison-criminal reform and its surrender to justice (for criminal organizations/gangs) proposals both failed, not even receiving a first debate in commission. The government was also forced to withdraw the political reform in March 2023 after it turned into an unsalvageable mess.
In his speech, Petro also announced that the government would present a new mining code, an agrarian reform as well as education and public services reforms. It’s unclear when they’ll actually be made public and presented.
In his interview with La Silla, interior minister Velasco said that the government hopes to have the healthcare and pension reforms approved before the elections at the end of October, and the new labour reform underway with some sort of progress made.
Indeed, the government will be well aware that congressmen will be increasingly distracted by the local elections in the fall and that any substantive work in Congress will be considerably more difficult as a result. If the elections are seen as a defeat for the government in the big cities and departments (as is quite likely), other parties in Congress will use that to increase their bargaining power over the government.
The government will also probably find its power even further damaged by the arrest of Nicolás Petro, the president’s son, accused of money laundering and illicit enrichment amidst allegations that he collected dirty money from drug traffickers and corrupt businessmen for his father’s 2022 campaign (more on that in a future post).
How will Petro’s agenda and the government fare in Congress in the next 12 months? Stay tuned!