Almost two thirds of Colombian citizens, 61%, disagree with President Gustavo Petro calling a Constituent Assembly to reform the current 1991 Constitution. This is indicated by a new survey carried out by the company Cifras y Conceptos, among on May 30 and June 10, to 1,607 people located in the four largest cities in the country.
The results of the Polimetric survey also show that the president’s favorable image remains low, at 38%. 81% of those who have an unfavorable image of the president – 59% of those surveyed – do not want a Constituent Assembly. Only among the 38% who support the president is there a climate in favor of a reform of this type, with 61%.
Petro has been launching the idea of a Constituent Assembly since March, when his health reform was going to sink in the Legislature. Weeks later he spoke better of a constitutional referendum and then of appealing to the 2016 peace agreement to reform the Constitution. Recently, he continues to use the word Constituent, although less than the word assembly. “When a people places themselves in the position of deciding on a government or on State institutions, they place themselves in something called constituent power,” he said this Tuesday in a meeting with indigenous communities in the department of Nariño. “It is not, as journalists say, the (Constituent) Assembly, that is something else, they have confused it, due to lack of reading.”
Constitutional experts, political parties and the signatories or negotiators of that peace agreement have spoken against the Constituent Assembly, such as former president Juan Manuel Santos and senator Humberto de la Calle. In addition to all the other liberal and right-wing former presidents, such as Ernesto Samper, César Gaviria, Iván Duque, Álvaro Uribe. The Polimetric survey reveals that even in public opinion, after three months of debate, there are no majorities—as there were in 1990—to appeal to an Assembly to create a new constitutional text.
Although Petro’s former chancellor, Álvaro Leyva, has insisted on being able to appeal to a Constituent Assembly through the peace process, other key members of Petrism working on the Government of Total Peace project have not given their support to a possible assembly. Senator Iván Cepeda, for example, negotiator at the dialogue table with the ELN guerrilla, prefers that the Government concentrate more on rebuilding the national partisan agreement that it had at the beginning of the Government, which would allow the president to pass priority legislative initiatives for the change project.
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This week the pension and education reforms could be approved, and the labor reform could be saved—governmental banners for which there is certain legislative consensus. If there is a favorable wind in Congress to achieve the change that the president wants, and with the headwind among public opinion for a Constituent Assembly, every day there seems to be less reason to continue calling for an Assembly.
The Polimetrica survey also shows a high unfavorable opinion towards Vice President Francia Márquez: 65% disapprove of her management in office, and 56% disapprove of her as the new Minister of Equality and Equity. The Minister of Health, Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo, is the one who reports the worst unfavorable image among the entire Cabinet, with only 18% favorability and 40% unfavorability. The situation is generalized: the one who subscribes the most support, Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo, reaches only 29%. For this reason, the manager of the polling company has said on Caracol Radio that the figures show that “there is more president than government.”
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