With the decision of the Liberal Party to withdraw its support for the health reform project, it practically broke the government coalition.
This decision was expected from the meeting that President Gustavo Petro had with the groups of the Historical Pact on Tuesday night and which was attended by the Partido de la U with Dilian Francisco; the Conservative Party with Efraín Cepeda; while Germán Escobar was from the Liberal Party, but former President César Gaviria did not attend.
Yesterday the former president and head of the Liberal Party, César Gaviria, published a statement in which he expressed his complete separation from the construction of the articles, assuring that it was not possible to reconcile with the House of Nariño on this bill.
“The Liberal Party has made the decision to move away from the construction of the health reform bill led by the National Government,” Gaviria said in his statement.
Likewise, Gaviria has emphasized that the party has always sought rapprochement and has tried to unify ideas with the Casa de Nariño; ‟We have extended to the Government an enormous willingness to reach political consensus on technical issues, for example, the adequate institutional design that any system must have for risk management in the health of people and communities, in this sense, in the last A rapprochement with the Government has been sought for weeks trying to find a system that preserves the insurance model ”, the statement states.
Observations
On the other hand, they assure that they have made some observations of the text and they have been to make the system stronger without “destroying” or “limiting” the participation of the private sector, all this to guarantee a free choice on the part of the beneficiary in the system and avoid poor financial management of health and, despite the fact that they have made these points clear, they have not found them within the reform.
‟We observe that the proposed base lines of any agreement have not been reflected in the writing of an article of presentation of the draft Law. For this reason, the Liberal Party has made the decision to depart from the construction of the Law to reform the health led by the National Government ”, affirms the letter of the bench.
Previously, the liberals had been making comments on technical issues of the health reform. However, the objections that have been made to the Executive regarding the content of the reform have not materialized in the construction of a real document to be taken into account in the final paper that must be presented to Congress.
conversations
The Liberals had been negotiating the articles with the Government for several weeks and had already expressed their displeasure with the extensive conversations they had with Petro and Corcho, these would not be consolidated in a new article proposal.
The determination of the Liberal Party leaves only the Conservatives and the Partido de la U who still argue that they are uncertain about giving their full support to the project.
In the last position of the Government through the announcement of the Minister of the Interior, Alfonso Prada, it was insisted that the talks are advancing at 99% and that it is only necessary to put the agreements within the text.
Meanwhile, from the Congress the president of the Senate, Roy Barreras, urged the speakers to present the reports of the initiative to be able to advance in its legislative process.
The Government needs to convince the congressmen of the Seventh Committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives to implement the health reform in the Capitol.
Now with the departure of the Liberal Party from the negotiations and in which there is no consensus; the Executive must go back to make accounts. Although for now, it continues to have majorities due to the support of the Historical Pact, the Conservative, the Green Alliance, La U and other minorities such as the Comunes Party.