Contradiction
While the Minister of Health, Carolina Cork, insists that the articles of the health reform project that the Government is reviewing to define the initiative that will be filed in Congress the first week of February has been widely discussed and agreed upon with multiple sectors of the system, several of these have replicated that this is not true and that they are unaware of the text that is being analyzed at the level of the Council of Ministers. Proof of this is what a spokesperson for the non-governmental organization Pacientes Colombia warned, according to which “…it is not true that patients have participated in the construction of the government’s health reform. It is not true that the dialogues carried out by you have presented some text. Minister, share the text, everyone asks for it”.
State of Opinion (I)
The call made by President Gustavo Petro for citizens to take to the streets to debate and defend the scope of the pension, labor and health reforms, generated multiple reactions, especially from those who insist that the Casa de Nariño would be resorting to this route as an element of popular pressure on Congress, just as Uribism did at the time, when it managed to speak of “State of opinion”, in an obvious attempt so that, at the end of 2009 and beginning of 2010 , the Constitutional Court gave free rein to the referendum that sought to open the way for an eventual third consecutive term for outgoing President Álvaro Uribe. As recalled, the first re-election became viable from the so-called reform of the constitutional “article”, in 2004, which prohibited a president from repeating consecutively in the House of Nariño.
State of Opinion (II)
Precisely the former presidential candidate, former senator and head of the New Liberalism, Juan Manuel Galan, brought up this comparison. “First it was the state of uribista opinion and now it is the state of petrista opinion. But both insist on making us believe that they are not the same. They do the same but are not the same? Don’t think people are stupid… Both despise democratic institutions when they bother their authoritarian impulses, vanities and whims that, for example, will leave Bogotá without metro. Today the dam that sustains democracy in Colombia against authoritarianism is the Constitutional Court. You have to support her!”
Reforms and the street (I)
Regarding the controversy over Petro’s call to discuss the reforms in the streets, a senior source from the Democratic Center said that “…contrary to what many in my party think, I really like Petro’s proposal to call for the reforms to be discussed from the streets… I think some of the Uribista voices and also those of the government forget that Petro was elected by a tight margin of 700,000 votes over those who did not want him as President… Those people, who are almost half of the electorate is also part of the ‘street people’, they will also take to the streets to press the reforms…”.
Reforms and the street (II)
The same source added that “to believe that the streets only belong to Petristas or that half of Colombian workers are going to remain quiet and resigned to the fact that the government meddles with the labor market, pensions or the health system, He is very naive both from the House of Nariño and from the opposition… Petro calls to the streets, because the people, those who support him and those who criticize him, who have grown in recent times due to the number of mistakes made, will go out to the streets… I believe that the Government is wrong to call for social mobilization for the reforms and does not calculate the growing distrust of them or the rapid wear and tear of the management”.