The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, assured on Tuesday (06/04/2024) that he does not rule out seeking re-election “in the future”, despite the fact that the law prevents it, through a change to the Constitution that he has been promoting for weeks amid of criticism from his predecessors.
The leftist president has recently insisted on convening a national constituent assembly using the 2016 peace agreement between the State and the FARC guerrilla, a proposal strongly condemned by Nobel Peace Prize winner Juan Manuel Santos and other former presidents.
“I do not want to be re-elected (…) but I do not deny that possibility in the future because the constituent power has to express itself,” Petro said during an event at the presidential Casa de Nariño.
In power since August 2022, Petro assures that the State has failed to comply with several points of the peace agreement with the FARC negotiated in Havana, which is why he proposes making adjustments by calling a national constituent assembly.
The opposition claims that he is actually doing it to include an article that allows re-election, eliminated by Congress in 2015, and extend his mandate beyond 2026.
Former president Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018), who signed peace with the once most powerful guerrilla in America, assures that Petro makes a wrong interpretation of the agreement and suggested that if he wants to change the Magna Carta he must do so within the framework of the current laws.
On Monday, the influential former president sent a letter to the Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, stating that “nowhere” in the pact is it written “that the “rules established in the current Constitution” can be ignored.
Other former presidents such as Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) and Iván Duque (2018-2022) assure that Petro’s proposals are a risk for democracy.
Over the weekend, Petro assured in an interview with the Cambio portal that Santos and Uribe are “orchestrating” a “coup d’état” against him.
During the campaign, Petro promised that he was not going to change the 1991 Constitution, but he changed his speech after being elected president.
gs (afp, efe)
