Year Two in Congress: A mixed bag

The 2023-2024 congressional sessions ended on June 20. On balance, it was a mixed bag for the Petro administration: victories to celebrate, but big defeats too.

Congressional sessions for the 2023-2024 legislative term (legislatura) ended on June 20. For the Petro administration, year two of Congress was a mixed bag, with some victories to celebrate but also some major defeats and setback. It wasn’t a Congress dedicated to blocking all of Petro’s initiatives, as he has sometimes claimed, but it also wasn’t a Congress subordinated to the executive like in the past. Reflecting back, interior minister Luis Fernando Velasco said it was an excellent year for the government. That’s a bit of an exaggeration.

Victories…

This Congress ended on a positive note for the government in the House with the adoption, in extremis and with a controversial pupitrazo, of the pension reform. This was a major victory for the government, the only piece of Petro’s ambitious agenda of socioeconomic reforms to finally be adopted by Congress. In addition, the legislative term saw the adoption of the statutory law for the new agrarian jurisdiction, the bilateral investment treaty with Venezuela, a ban on bullfighting, an increase in the debt ceiling to $17.6 billion, a constitutional amendment guarenteeing the fourteenth pension payment (mesada 14) to military veterans, a law increasing benefits for military service and the ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture. The seventh commission of the House also approved, in first debate, the labour reform, a small but important victory for the government that keeps the reform (that’d been frozen for months) alive and allows it to continue debate in the next legislative term. However, against the government’s will, representatives eliminated nearly all articles about union rights and the right to strike.

The government can also be satisfied that, unsurprisingly, all of the opposition’s motions of no confidence against cabinet ministers failed—there were motions against defence minister Iván Velásquez (in March and June 2024, in the Senate and House respectively) and health minister Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo (in March and June 2024 in the House). No Colombian cabinet minister has ever been removed by a motion of no confidence (in many cases, those most threatened resign or are fired beforehand, like Petro’s sports minister who was fired in February after the 2027 Pan Am Games fiasco). The opposition, however, has made good use of those motions to delay and hinder the government’s agenda in Congress and to bring public attention to scandals and government mismanagement (primarily on healthcare and security).

… and defeats

The pension reform saved the legislatura for the government after the brutal defeat of the healthcare reform in its third debate in the Senate, in April. It’d been the centrepiece of Petro’s socioeconomic reforms and became a point of honour for the government, which refused to make signigficant concessions or seriously seek to build consensus around it. The government spent enormous amounts of time and political capital on it, at the expense of its other reforms, only to see it go down in flames in the Senate’s seventh commission. Undeterred, Petro is precipitating the ‘explicit crisis’ of the healthcare reform, trying to implement parts of his reform through the backdoor, while the government will present a new reform during the next session after reaching an agreement with the EPS (insurance providers).

In addition to the healthcare reform, the transfuguismo (floor crossing) reform, vital to the Pacto’s electoral interests in 2026, failed due to the lack of time.

Just days after the government celebrated the adoption of the pension reform, the education reform died on June 20. The education reform—a statutory law that would have defined education as a fundamental right and made secondary school (educación media, grades 10 and 11) compulsory, among others—flew under the radar in the House, but got out of control in the Senate in early June. In commission, lacking a majority, the government struck a deal with the opposition, making several concessions to allow the reform to go through. The new version mentioned the private and mixed sectors, teacher evaluations based on student performance, introduced the concept of tertiary education (including universities, trade schools, technical and vocational education, professional institutes etc.), allowed school vouchers and removed ‘direct’ governance of universities (which’d have allowed for direct election of rectors by students and faculty).

However, the modifications displeased the Pacto caucus and much of the left and were rejected by the powerful teachers’ union, Fecode, a close ally of the Pacto that was one of the biggest donors to the Petro campaign in 2022 and the bedrock of Petro’s different marches. Fecode claimed that the text negotiated with uribismo and the right broke the essence of the reform and was an unacceptable regressive setback for public education. They argued that the reform allowed for the privatization and commercialization of education under the pretext of quality, subordinated teacher evaluation to student performance, reduced education to an essential public service (debiliating organized labour) and created a level of tertiary tertiary which would reduce the quality of education and reduce post-secondary education to merely certifying skills and supplying the needs of the labour market. Fecode declared a permament strike to demand the bill’s withdrawal.

The government gave in to Fecode’s pressure and broke its agreement with the opposition. With time running out and no consensus anymore, the reform’s fate was sealed. Interior minister Velasco acknowledged that they’d made mistakes and that letting the reform die was an possible option, all while education minister Aurora Vergara, under fire from all sides, held out hope that her reform could be salvaged. While Petro blamed the opposition, the opposition feels that the government can’t be trusted to keep its word, and that it easily folds under pressure from the streets and their base.

Difficult majorities

In sum, the balance of year two in Congress was mixed for the government: some victories, some (big) defeats. Petro’s frustration and anger with the difficulties at getting his agenda through Congress pushed him to adopt increasingly radical, populist rhetoric, culminating in his ‘constituent process’ idea in March, along with regular attacks on congressmen who voted against his reforms and an acrimonious relationship with Iván Name, the president of the Senate. Contrary to what Petro has sometimes claimed or insinuated, Congress hasn’t blocked all of his agenda, although it hasn’t been subordinated government either, unlike in some past administrations.

The government has a more reliable and solid majority in the House, with over 110 potential allies out of 187 members. In the Senate, the government lacks a majority and has, at most, the support of just over 50 of the 105 senators. The graphic from La Silla Vacía shows the makeup of the government’s alliances.

The government was able to obtain these victories despite the implosion of the coalition (with the Conservatives, La U and the Liberals) last spring. Since then, it’s adopted a strategy of going around the party leaders, instead negotiating directly with groups of congressmen in those parties and exploiting internal divisions in those parties (particularly the Liberals). Interior minister Luis Fernando Velasco has been the brains behind the operation, and worked with certain key operators in other parties—including Conservative rep. Alfredo ‘Ape’ Cuello, Partido de la U senators Antonio Correa and José David Name, Green rep. Olga Lucía Velásquez and Liberals like rep. Olga Beatriz González and senator Juan Diego Echavarría. Behind the scenes, the government has rewarded these allies with patronage appointments (cuotas burocráticas)—like Luz Cristina López, the new sports minister, ‘recommended’ by Ape Cuello. The UNGRD corruption scandal, however, also hinted that some allied congressmen were paid off with bribes or contracts, like many opponents suspected. Olmedo López, the former director of the UNGRD, said that the presidents of both houses (Andrés Calle and Iván Name) and other congressmen like Conservative rep. Wadith Manzur received bribes, and has implicated senior government figures including Velasco. These accusations have been roundly denied, and yet to be proven, but both the government and congressmen obviously fear further revelations.

We’ll talk about what year three looks like after the new term begins on July 20, but dealing with Congress tends to only get more difficult the further along in a president’s term. If year two was an exhausting process for the government, year three will be even tougher.