Sneyder Pinilla, former director of the Risk Management Unit (Ungrd), told La W y Semana today that he gave 3 billion pesos to the president of the Senate, Iván Name (Alianza Verde). Silver, according to him, that came from some La Guajira contracts. He did not specify why or why, but noted that the alleged payment was made in October of last year.
A possible bribe to Name generated surprise in Congress and in some circles of opinion. After all, the president of the Senate has clashed with the president, Gustavo Petro, and his election meant a defeat for the government, which favored another candidate.
Yam, https://twitter.com/SenadoGovCo/status/1786450577175490649 He came out to deny Pinilla’s accusations, said that he did not even know him, and made himself available to the authorities. However, in a stealthy way, Name has helped advance the Petro government’s legislative agenda.
With the pension he stepped aside
Iván Name began to give impetus to the Petro government’s pension reform since December 2023. It was surprising that on December 13, days before the sessions ended, he ordered the reform to be included in the announcements of second debate projects.
It is the power of the president of the Senate to say whether the projects are announced and define their priority on the agenda. The announcement is a step before the official process begins, and having made it in December helped the government gain time. Name’s decision generated murmurs in the plenary. “Mr. President, I ask for the withdrawal of the project, it is irresponsible to announce and have a discussion in December,” said Senator Lorena Ríos, opponent of the pension.
“It is at the discretion of the table, but it is strange that it is announced one day before closing,” added Ciro Ramírez, from the Democratic Center, also an opposition member. The two senators voted for Name for the Presidency.
“I’m not going to take it back. It’s my discretion. The obligation is to study the proposals, it will not harm our rest, this is only so that it is enabled for the relevant study starting in February,” Name responded.
Since February 27, a week after the sessions began, the pension reform began to appear as the first item on the agenda of the sessions.
Although Name adjourned a couple of sessions to protest some statements by President Petro about the collapse of the health reform – their political rivalry is public – it was not an obstacle for the pension when the debate officially started.
For example, in March he called plenary sessions three days in a row in the same week. Something he had never done before. He also approved that a session be held in the middle of Holy Week to evacuate a public hearing requested by the opposition.
And most importantly, Name withdrew from the relevant sessions of the April pension when the articles were being voted on. With Name, sessions can become slow because it usually gives unlimited microphones to senators, especially those from the opposition. Without him, control remains in the hands of María José Pizarro, today vice president of the Senate, and congressman of the Historical Pact.
In the last two weeks of the Senate pension, Name installed, gave words, and then, without warning, left. On the way out she used to greet effusively the Minister of Labor, Gloria Inés Ramírez, or the Minister of the Interior, Luis Fernando Velasco. Without his presence, the opposition was left with one less vote, and the government assumed control of the plenary session with Pizarro.
Pizarro’s leadership, plus the alliance of the liberals and La U to help create a quorum, unblocked the pension process in the Senate. Something that has the project ready for its third debate in the House of Representatives.
He shelved an order to mess with Petro’s health
In August 2023, newly sworn in as president of the Senate, Name received a request from the opposition. Given the failures in President Petro’s agenda, congressmen from the Democratic Center and Radical Change asked Name to submit for consideration a proposal for Petro to undergo medical examinations to determine if he was fit to govern.
“His increasingly frequent disappearances from the public scene raise the hypothesis that his health conditions are not the most optimal and that in turn they are not allowing him to adequately exercise his leadership of State and Government,” the proposition said. which 10 congressmen signed.
These types of requests must go through the plenary session of the Senate and it is the discretion of the president of the board of directors to say whether or not they vote, or when. Name never scheduled that request and the issue was running out of media momentum.
He even voted in favor of cannabis when he had always hidden himself
On December 12 of last year, the government took a chance to advance the bill that regulates the consumption of marijuana in adults. And he moved strongly to advance it in the Senate plenary.
That day Senator Name played a key role. In other attempts to carry out this project, both in the governments of Iván Duque and in that of Petro, when the issue of cannabis regulation was on the agenda, Name was conspicuous by its absence.
For example, in the plenary session last June the senator from Barranquilla left before the vote. He also did not vote in December 2022, when the project was in its fourth debate. He was also absent when a similar project, authored by Luis Fernando Velasco – today Minister of the Interior – was discussed in the First Committee of the Senate in 2020, where he shared a chair with Petro.
For this reason, in the projections of the authors and promoters of the December 2023 cannabis project, Name’s vote was always marked as a potential no or an abstentionist.
But this time, Name did take a stand. This occurred when he opened the vote to submit a proposal to archive the project, promoted by an alliance of conservatives, liberals, the Democratic Center and Christian sectors.
Name, with Minister Velasco at his side, was one of the first to vote against this archive proposal, stating for the first time publicly his position on an issue that he had avoided in his legislative work.
It was a nod to a government bet that surprised those who defend that cause.
