* Health reform shipwrecked
* Real change is in Congress
As expected, yesterday the Government slammed the door again, this time surely definitive, on the possibilities of concluding the health reform with the parties not affiliated with the radical rule with which it has tried to lead the ruling coalition. In other words, the Conservative, Liberal and La U parties. In fact, President Gustavo Petro himself wished them “good luck” from the United States, ruling out any alternative other than submitting to their unrestricted will and the multiple immovables of their project. , which is precisely what is under discussion. And force them to simply be satisfied with the peripheral modifications that were intended to distract the gallery and with which Minister Carolina Corcho tried to convince the unsuspecting.
Nor is it surprising. From the beginning, a couple of months ago, when the Executive supposedly opened the space to reach a consensus, it was clearly seen that through him the president was showing a conciliatory face, promoting meeting points, but from another side He sent his ministerial delegate to the meetings not to give in one iota, nor move an inch from the statistizing, bureaucratic and hegemonic purposes, transversal to the essential proposal. In other words, as has been reiterated from the beginning in these editorials and in many other columns, as well as among authorized voices of the ministerial cabinet, to return to the tragic jurisdictions of the Social Security Institute, with all the meaning of death, negligence, and desolation that led to his burial after the entry into force of the 1991 Constitution and whose harmful foundations are now being revived as the great panacea, leaving Colombians hopelessly deprived of a true health system.
But this time it is no longer Minister Corcho, but the President himself who finally established his position. The country would have been spared a lot of wear and tear if it had done so since the text of the health reform was presented to public opinion for the first time, supposedly carrying out what was promised in the presidential campaign. But it is enough to look at the government program to find two things: first, that there is talk of making a reform to guarantee the fundamental right health, modifying the corresponding norm (Statutory Law 1751 of 2015); and, second, that this would be done within the framework of a great National Pact.
Well then, if it was about modifying a statutory law to guarantee the fundamental right to health, as stated at the beginning of the programmatic proposal, what was promised is being breached when an ordinary law is currently used, in the respective committees of the Chamber and Senate, in order to evade the clauses that require a specific and demanding constitutional procedure because they are substantial changes that affect the rights of all Colombians. And, in the same sense, for the whole country it is clear that, instead of a great National Pact, what survives today is exactly the opposite. So that both the legal and the political scope of what was said in the government program are breached. Even worse, when congressmen are summoned to the air, at retail, to the Casa de Nariño; clientelist extortion is threatened around fats vice ministries and seeks to violate the Bench Law, issued at the time precisely to banish the buying of consciences from the chamber and sponsor free, democratic, technical, disciplined and high-level discussion, without any kind of clientelistic coyundations.
However, to tell the truth, the political parties have known how to be at the level of the circumstances. Those declared in opposition have presented brainy projects that deserve a substantive debate. And the declared pro-governmentists, but who at least warned that they would maintain their independent vocation, have not crossed the red and blue lines that they self-imposed to achieve a reform that, although necessary, did not mean the demolition of the health system at all. Possibly the Government thought that they would be a mere decoration, if you will, just a few lapdogs, forgetting that they are the majority and far exceed the vote of the president himself.
Under this perspective, the Executive cannot say, under any circumstances, that the parties have not wanted the reform and that they have not worked to achieve it. But, of course, from slamming the door, no one reaches any Pereira. If parties are not welcome; if the government prefers to sink into its political sophistry instead of accepting the serious dialectic; If he considers that Congress is just a bargaining chip and believes that patronage solves everything, he will find that the country has indeed changed. But that has changed despite him.