THE SURPRISING Ivan Name’s election for Senate President was the work of the opposition and independent parties. In this way, although they respected the agreements for the Alianza Verde-Centro Esperanza to hold office in the second legislature, they blocked the way for Angélica Lozano, who was nominated by this political force and who had the support of the Government. In this sense, the reading of many is that the House of Nariño was defeated and that it is a message that they send after losing the majorities due to the fracture of the coalition.
Iván Name obtained 54 votes, while Lozano reached 50 in the vote made by the plenary session of the Senate, after the installation of the second legislature made by President Gustavo Petro.
Due to the agreements signed by the different political forces at the beginning of this Congress, the presidency of the Senate in the second legislature corresponds to the Alianza Verde-Centro Esperanza coalition, which nominated Angélica Lozano before the plenary, who had obtained the support of eight of the 13 members of her caucus hours before this election, in the bid that she held for several weeks with the other aspirants and political currency companions, Inti Asprilla, Ariel Ávila and Iván Name , without being able to agree on who of them would appear.
However, Unexpectedly after the nomination of Lozano by the Alianza Verde-Centro Esperanza and the Pacto Histórico, the two forces that remain in the coalition that supports the policies of President Petro, Senator Iván Name raised his hand to announce that he was running on his own behalf, which, on the one hand, caused surprise because the usual thing is that the applicants to integrate the boards of directors in the Senate and House are nominated by one or several parties or by another parliamentarian.
And on the other hand, because after the majority support for Lozano from the majority of the Alianza Verde-Centro Esperanza bench, it was expected that the other candidates would decline, as Inti Asprilla finally did reluctantly and, previously, Ávila had done.
However, Name, warning that he recognized Lozano’s qualities, stressed that he had the right to aspire and announced that he could do it in his own name without submitting to the will of a party, on which he said there are Constitutional Court rulings.
So when the outgoing president of the Senate, Alexander López, opened the vote for the presidency, as well as the first and second vice presidencies, what many expected in the coalition, as well as in the Executive itself, which in the end played with Lozano, was that she would beat Name in the result of the vote.
While, many did not count on the fact that on this occasion the opposition and the independents were not going to limit themselves simply to accompanying the agreements so that the Alianza Verde-Centro Esperanza will occupy the presidency in the second legislature, and that, therefore, they will vote for the name they nominated, Lozano; Rather, he saw the golden opportunity to impose a name, Name, which, although it is part of the government coalition, is not so close to the Petro administration.
For now it is not known if the independents and the opposition planned this move and that, as some in the government coalition even think, Name would have agreed with these forces to maintain his aspiration with the promise of supporting him with the vote; or if they saw the opportunity to influence by taking advantage of the stubbornness of a senator to insist on reaching the presidency of the Senate without the support of his party.
How was the vote?
The 54 votes for Iván Name would correspond to: Democratic Center (13), Radical Change (11), Conservative Party (15), La U (4), MIRA (4), Liberal Party (6) and Green Alliance (1).
The 50 votes for Angélica Lozano would have been cast as follows: Historical Pact (20), Liberal Party (7), Alianza Verde-Centro Esperanza coalition (12), Comunes (5), La U (4), Indigenous (2).
implications
In the last stage of the first legislature, the Government lost its majority in Congress after President Gustavo Petro broke the coalition with the Liberal, Conservative and U parties because they did not support his health reform.
As a result of this, the conservatives and the U went to independence; While the Liberals, although on paper, are still in the ruling party because they have not made a different political statement and in practice the bench is divided because some want to remain in the coalition and others to go for independence.
Therefore, what happened in the last legislature with the collapse in the eighth debate of the constitutional reform that regulated the recreational use of cannabis in adults was a preview of what could happen now in the second legislature due to the new map of how political forces are distributed.
This seems to be confirmed with the election of the president of the Senate headed by Iván Name, since it was the independent Conservative Party and the U, as well as the opposition Centro Democrático and Cambio Radical, who put it.
This is a very strong message that these political forces are giving to the Government in the face of the discussion of the big projects in the second legislature, such as the health reform and the pension reform, in the sense that it will have to arrange adjustments to the initiatives or they could end up sinking or the texts being modified abruptly.
The election of Name would also be a message from the forces opposed to the Government that they will not tolerate their interference in the decisions of Congress, since the House of Nariño was at stake in this process, taking into account that the Alianza Verde-Centro Esperanza is part of the collection, and by this means the Executive branch hoped to keep someone of its own in the Senate presidency, since in the first legislature it was headed by the Historical Pact with Roy Barreras and then with Alexander López, after the first legislature Council of State annulled the election.
The Minister of the Interior, Luis Fernando Velasco, was present last Thursday in the plenary session of the Senate closely following the election of the one who he hoped had given him the ‘wink’, that is, Angélica Lozano.
However, in the selection process in the Alianza Verde-Centro Esperanza of the candidate for the presidency of the Senate, the Government lurched in front of who to give the ‘wink’, according to their interests.
First, he supported Inti Asprilla because he is the closest to Peronism, later he was about to decide between Ávila and Name, and finally, before the decision of the green bench, he chose to support Angélica Lozano.
In the plenary session, Senator Asprilla, when announcing that he was giving up his aspiration, complained to the Government. “Today I have suffered the first political defeat in my life and it is painful,” he said. He added that “it is extremely painful to see the government campaign for Angélica Lozano. I accept defeat, I retire and history will tell if it was worth it or not.
Congressional independence
Several opposition and independent parliamentarians stated that Name’s election is a show of independence from Congress.
Senator Miguel Uribe, from the Democratic Center, said that “Angélica Lozano, supported by Petro and with the presence of the Mayor and four ministers in plenary, pressing the congressmen, were defeated.” She added that “the Senate is independent. We won the presidency of Congress from Petro. We started off well.”
For his part, Senator Carlos Fernando Motoa, from Cambio Radical, said that “the appointment of Iván Name Vásquez as President of Congress ratifies the independence of the Senate from the National Government. It is a wise decision that will mark what will be the rest of the legislature. The support of all the senators was decisive.”
However, Senator Paloma Valencia, was disappointed because she expected a bigger vote against the interests of the Government. “The tightness of the elections for the boards of the Senate shows that there are congressmen who are publicly against the Government, and with the secret vote they support it.”