(Bogotá) Colombian President Gustavo Petro said on Tuesday that he did not rule out running “in the future” at the head of the country, although the law prevents him from doing so, through a modification of the Constitution that he has been talking about for weeks despite the criticism.
Mr. Petro, elected in the summer of 2022 as the first left-wing president in the history of Colombia, has repeatedly expressed in recent months the idea of convening a Constituent Assembly to modify the Constitution, while several of his reforms are or were blocked in Parliament.
“I don’t want to be re-elected […]but I do not deny this possibility in the future because the constituent power must express itself,” Mr. Petro once again declared during an event organized at the presidency.
“If the institutions we have today in Colombia are not capable of carrying out the social reforms that the people decreed through their vote […] then Colombia must go to a National Constituent Assembly,” he had already declared in March, raising this possibility for the first time.
With the wind rising against such an idea, the opposition affirms that the head of state hopes to include in the fundamental law an article which would allow his re-election (Parliament abolished re-election in 2015), and thus prolong his functions beyond of 2026.
To justify the possible convening of this Constituent Assembly, President Petro asserts that the State has not respected several points of the historic peace agreement of 2016 with the Marxist guerrillas of the FARC, and that adjustments should be made. requiring an amendment to the Constitution.
Mastermind of this peace agreement which resulted in the disarmament of what was the most powerful guerrilla force in Latin America, the former president (2010-2018) and Nobel Peace Prize winner Juan Manuel Santos sent a letter on Monday to the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, to emphasize that “nowhere” in the pact was there any mention of convening a Constituent Assembly, as Mr. Petro suggests.
Other former presidents, such as conservatives Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010) and Ivan Duque (2018-2022), saw Mr. Petro’s proposals as a threat to Colombian democracy.
For his part, Mr. Petro accused, in an interview with the Cambio information site, MM. Santos and Uribe to “orchestrate” a “coup d’état” against him.
During his presidential campaign, candidate Petro promised that he would not modify the 1991 Constitution, ensuring that he would not seek to stay in power after 2026.