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The draft legislative act that proposed extending the terms of Iván Duque and Congress until 2024 did not even have 24 hours to live.
The project to unify the presidential and legislative elections with the local and departmental elections, and thus extend the mandate of President Iván Duque and the current Congress for two more years, was born dead. Before the proposal was made official, the ghost haunted the halls of the Capitol and various sectors of the opposition moved against the idea. So when the text was finally released, it was only a matter of hours before it was discarded. Citizen pressure and pressure from multiple sectors, official and opposition, meant that the controversial initiative was not even established.
More context: A project to extend the term of Duque and Congress collapsed (without having been settled).
The road to the failure of the legislative act began in the first week of March. At that time the liberal senator Luis Fernando Velasco denounced through social networks that the Government was calling nearby legislators to probe the possibility of extending the terms of Presidency and Congress. As he told The viewer, members of the ruling party confirmed those calls from officials of the Duque administration to discuss the matter. He even assured that several members of the Third Commission who participated in the articulation of the tax reform also recognized the intentions of the Executive.
Velasco’s complaints gained momentum and the opposition asked Duque to demonstrate and make his intentions clear. However, government spokesmen, such as the Minister of the Interior, Daniel Palacios, assured that “the extension of the presidential term is not on the agenda.” Even so, the uneasiness continued, as there was never a statement of the president’s own rejecting the proposal. And so came the start of the 2021 legislative sessions. And since the initiative to increase the presidential term was not among the projects filed and no one assumed its spokesperson, it was thought that the proposal was not going to materialize.
As well: There is a proposal to extend the term of President Duque and Congress for two years.
However, on the afternoon of last Wednesday, during the blended session of the plenary session of the Chamber, a document began to circulate that proposed to extend the terms of Duque and the congressmen, seeking to collect the necessary signatures for their establishment. The project proposed several radical changes to the Constitution, among which the following stood out: unifying legislative, presidential, departmental and local elections; increase to five years the terms of the positions of popular election and of prosecutor, attorney, comptroller and ombudsman; increase to 10 years the terms of the magistrates of the high courts; enable re-election for mayors and governors in 2024; freeze the salaries of congressmen, and extend the terms of Duque and Congress for two years.
As soon as the document was known, the rejection by the opposition and a good part of the citizenship became notorious. Through the media and social networks, the names of the 23 representatives who signed the controversial initiative began to circulate. Most of the signatories were from the Conservative Party, but there were also from the Liberal Party, Radical Change and the Democratic Center. Of course, those who endorsed the project were known, but not its authors. The document did not have the typical letterheads and did not make it clear who were the ones who supposedly wrote and presented the proposal. Only at night, the representative Félix Chica assured that he and four other members of his party, the Conservative, were responsible.
“What you have to do is socialize and notice the benefits of the project. This discussion must have taken place a long time ago. It is my first term in the Chamber, but I think that this debate should take place at some point, because it is something that the territorial entities have been looking for for years, “Chica told this newspaper, who stressed that the proposal was not from Fedemunicipios , but it had his approval. However, this Thursday, the association of municipalities claimed responsibility and assured that “it was based on an unexpected event: the coronavirus pandemic.” On the other hand, on the same Tuesday night, the two traditional parties began to debate support for the project.
Plus: Fury within the Conservative Party for a project to extend Duque’s term.
In conservatism, the annoyance was that, despite the bitter controversy, the idea was never debated or even mentioned in the caucus meetings. On the other hand, in the liberal ranks, the signatories backed down and asked for their signature to be withdrawn. The reason for this decision has two versions: while some assured that the former president and director of the community, César Gaviria, gave them an ultimatum: “Either they withdraw that support for the extension of terms or I am leaving the leadership of the Liberal party”, Others commented that they were deceived in their “good faith”, since those who collected the signatures would have told them that it was the initiative of Alejandro Chacón, which only seeks to unify the 2022 elections on the same day.
On Thursday morning the debate stirred. The general director of Fedemunicipios, Gilberto Toro, and representative Armando Zabaraín, conservative, came out in defense of the proposal. The first justified the initiative in the need for more time to apply local government plans and the second expressed the urgency to run the elections, since the pandemic prevented politics in regions. On the other hand, the annoyance of the opposition grew and its members, especially Gustavo Petro, asked to take to the streets to reject what they considered an institutional “coup d’état”. For the Government, Vice President Marta Lucía Ramírez and Minister Palacios rejected the proposal and emphasized that this administration would run until August 7, 2022.
In the morning it was learned that the signatories were withdrawing their support and there was the possibility that the main authors would present a letter withdrawing the initiative. The proposal was at risk from both sides, since without at least 10 signatures, it could not be filed. While awaiting the official death of the project, at noon President Iván Duque gave him the final blow by confirming that he did not seek to stay in the Casa de Nariño beyond August 7 of next year. It only took an hour since then for the secretary of the Chamber to confirm that he could not file the project, because 15 of the 23 original signatories asked to be deleted from the questioned initiative.
Pasture: “I will be president until August 7, 2022”: Duque does not support an extension of his mandate.
