After several weeks of discussions, the pension reform, promoted by the government of President Gustavo, was approved last Friday in the Congress of the Republic. The initiative received 88 votes in favor in the House of Representatives and will now go to presidential sanction.
As expected, the opposition rejected the way in which the reform was approved, ensuring that it was done through a vote. The pro-government congressmen expected the discussion to last until midnight, but decided to quickly move on to the vote when they saw that the proposition was authorized.
One of the last to speak out on this issue was Juan Carlos Losada, representative to the Chamber for the Liberal Party, who spoke exclusively with this Monday and assured that the order to carry out this 'little trick' was given by the president himself.
“I know from conversations I've had, and that this is clearly not the setting to reveal them. “The President of the Republic was the one who gave the order for this to be executed in that way and thus avoid the conciliations of the Senate,” initially stated.
Then he added: “That's the truth, we all know it. None of his ministers spoke out to continue the discussion of the project in the House, as appropriate. What they did was skip the certain roughing. Today there is no change in Congress.”
Will it fall in Court?
Several legal experts in constitutional law have warned that the legislative initiative has serious possibilities of falling when it reaches the respective review in the Constitutional Court. The same high court that, due to errors in Congress, has knocked down several projects from Gustavo Petro's government, such as the creation of the Ministry of Equality.
Lawyer Kenneth Burbano, director of the Constitutional Observatory of the Free University, explained a few days ago that the initiative has two serious difficulties, which would end up leaving it without a legal basis when it reaches the high court.
“The Legislative Branch in Colombia is bicameral. There is precedent in the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court that indicates that the debate and conciliation mechanism cannot be avoided, that is, that the Chamber cannot refer to what was decided in the Senate, without the respective debate. . This can lead to the principle of consecutiveness being affected, which in simple terms means that all the stages of procedures and debates legally established for the approval of the laws were not complied with,” the jurist stated.
