The pension reform was approved in the plenary session of the House of Representatives, after the chamber made the decision to adopt the project sent by the Senate of the Republic.
The initiative of the national government has aroused a series of criticisms, among them that of former vice president Germán Vargas Lleras.
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The leader of Cambio Radical in his opinion column published in Time and the social network x, warned of the “serious effects” of the pension reform after its approval.
Vargas Lleras specified that “they did it in the worst and most crude way… violating, once again, the regulations of Congress and ignoring numerous rulings of the Constitutional Court. If they wanted to avoid the conciliation of the texts of both chambers, they succeeded, but they left the reform moribund.”
Likewise, he indicated that “everyone was satisfied with the result. I understand it from the Government and its benches, from the parties that opposed at first and then gave in, only they will resolve their problems of conscience.”
The former vice president questioned the representatives of the private funds union, among them Santiago Montenegro, president of Asofondos: “I have to say with complete frankness that my biggest surprise came from the complicit and, I would say, complacent silence of Asofondos, Dr. Montenegro and the pension funds grouped there.”
For this reason, Vargas Lleras asked himself in his writing “What type of negotiation had taken place between them and the Government that we did not know about?”, answering the following: “It must have been around the new commissions agreed upon by the administration, calculated on the totality of the assets managed by them.”
And he explained: “A not inconsiderable 0.7%, which when miscounted, represents profits of more than 2.1 billion for them and which, in addition, will allow them to continue managing 400 billion in a first phase until old-age pensions are consolidated and pass to Colpensiones. Not to mention the VAT exemption for the services provided by the AFPs. Many other provisions confirm that the funds will receive greater profitability due to less management and responsibility. “Exactly the same model that was applied in the health reform to the EPS.”
Germán Vargas Lleras joined the list of those who ask that the pension reform be studied by the Constitutional Court, because there are rulings that make it clear that each project has to be widely debated before being approved or sunk in the Congress of the Republic.
“There remains, of course, the slight hope that the Constitutional Court does not change the jurisprudence that it has maintained for years on the processing of laws and legislative acts regarding the requirement of debates and publicity.. It is enough to remember sentences C-668 of 2004; C-084 of 2019, of which I was an actor, and C-047 of 2021, among many others,” said the leader of Cambio Radical.
And he added: “I am beginning to share the opinion of some analysts and, as María Isabel Rueda suggested regarding the ruling on the Ministry of Equality and several others, that the Court has begun to act with fear or political calculations. If this is the case, as I fear, we will have lost the last trench of institutionality.”
Santiago Montenegro, through a public letter, had already made it clear that he never had a meeting with the president of the House of Representatives, Andrés Calle, in the middle of the pension reform process.
“It is absolutely false to claim that I met with Mr. Andrés Calle. I do not know the representative nor have I ever met with him“wrote the president of Asofondos in the letter.
“In our law, negative facts are not susceptible to demonstration because it is impossible to prove that something was not done,” Montenegro added.
Finally, he stressed in the letter that it is not possible to exhibit evidence about situations that did not occur and that may affect his good name.
