Senators and representatives to the Chamber hold photos of victims of the armed conflict, during the installation of the new National Congress, in Bogotá.Carlos Ortega (EFE)
Colombia has a new Congress.
This Wednesday, at the National Capitol, the senators and representatives to the Chamber who will make up the Legislative for the next four years were sworn in.
It will be the Congress of the first times.
It is the first time that the left is not an opposition, that women occupy more than 30% of the seats, that a palenquera woman (Cha Dorina Hernández) has reached the House of Representatives.
For the first time the victims of the conflict have parliamentary representation and, also for the first time, the progressive and social forces are in the majority.
Gustavo Petro has the support of 63 of 108 senators, and 106 of 188 representatives in the Chamber.
Petro won the presidency, his popularity is on the rise (his approval rate stands at 64% after the June 19 elections, the highest figure for a president since 2005) and he has the luxury of beginning his administration with the best governability in the history.
More than Uribe, who was a milestone in 2002 and 2006;
and almost the same as Juan Manuel Santos in 2010. Petro managed to get two of his allies, congressmen Roy Barreras and David Racero, to stay with the presidency of the Senate and the House.
“We are not afraid of debate, we are not afraid of difference.
We are afraid of the unique thought that is dictatorial thought,” Racero said when speaking of the guarantees that they will give to the opposition.
During the installation of the Congress, this July 20, Independence Day, the senators and representatives to the Chamber raised posters with messages that will be their banner for the next four years and with claims against the outgoing government.
The Historical Pact remembered the assassinated social leaders and ex-combatants.
While Uribismo, the only party in opposition, showed images of deceased members of the public force and posters with the message "Two visions, one same country", with photos of the destruction of last year's social protests.
Iván Duque's speech stressed the installation of the new Congress.
“Liar!” the Historical Pact bloc shouted at him, standing up, when he said that drug trafficking, coca crops, corruption, and illegal armed groups were to blame for the murders of social leaders.
The outgoing president of the senate, Juan Diego Gómez, had to intervene to ask for silence and threatened to remove the left-wing senator Iván Cepeda from the room.
Duke launched taunts against his successor and challenged those who support him.
“Social justice can be done in the countryside without expropriations”, was one of the phrases that provoked shouts of protest and jeers among the congressmen.
When he finished speaking, he left the Capitol without listening to the opposition.
"Nothing different from what he did for four years," Senator Cepeda reacted on Twitter.
The representative to the Chamber, María Fernanda Carrascal, shows a poster in favor of abortion, during the installation of the new National Congress, in Bogotá.Carlos Ortega (EFE)
Senator Humberto de la Calle said before his inauguration that this will be "a leading Congress."
The reforms of the Petro Government (tax, agrarian, political) will pass through there.
De la Calle and Daniel Carvalho, elected by the Oxygen Green party, announced that they will have an independent position against the elected government of Gustavo Petro, and that they will support him on some legislative issues.
"We have decided since independence to accompany the legislative agenda of the Government that complies with the 1991 Constitution," both politicians stated in a statement after the expulsion of their party for not agreeing with the positions of its founder, Ingrid Betancourt.
Petro will face opposition from the Democratic Center, the party of former President Álvaro Uribe, which this time will have a smaller bench in the Senate.
The spokesperson will be held by the senators with the most weight in Uribe, María Fernanda Cabal, Paloma Valencia and Miguel Uribe (the latter achieved the highest number of votes on the list of the Democratic Center and is one of those closest to former President Uribe).
Rodolfo Hernández, who occupies a place in the Senate thanks to the more than 10 million votes that voted for him in the presidential elections, has not defined what his role will be in Congress, which, for now, amazes him.
"I have not seen this.
This is a mess.
Is this always like this? ”, He said this afternoon, according to the portal La Silla Vacía.
The former mayor of Bucaramanga accepted a seat after hesitating for several weeks.
With the possession of him as a senator,
Iván Cepeda, senator for the Historical Pact, has said that there will be “a political revolution”.
One of the proposals that he champions is the reform that seeks to limit the periods of a congressman to three, cut the parliamentary recess and make the system of loss of investiture due to absenteeism more severe.
"They will be gradual changes, all inscribed in the greatest respect for the Constitution," explained the senator this Wednesday, when he acknowledged that so far no proposal like the one they plan has been approved in Congress because political will has been lacking.
“It is the first time that a change in Congress has been proposed from a government bench.”
The new Congress wants to be recognized as the congress of change.
The legislative elections of March 13 showed the left as an alternative to power and Colombia opted for that path and is now facing an unprecedented and unknown scenario.
It is the first time for a left-wing government and it arrives with the majority support in a Congress in which it has already had its first victory.
Roy Barreras won the presidency of the Senate and has the mission of carrying out Petro's plans in parliament.
“The change is the reforms.
The rest is show”, Roy Barreras said last week in an interview with this newspaper, in which he assured that he will put all the commissions to work at full capacity to carry out the reforms expressly.
"We are the best examples of change," said Barreras, who has held a seat in Congress for the past 16 years.
"There is no senator who has made more changes in Colombia than I have," he says, confident in the face of the challenge ahead of him.
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