A poll published on Wednesday found that 62 percent of Colombians believe the nation’s radical leftist President Gustavo Petro will try to modify the country’s Constitution to stay in power beyond his presidential term.
The survey, conducted by the Colombian research agency Invamer, was conducted in Colombia’s main cities between June 15-23. Invamer found that Petro’s disapproval ratings reached 62 percent in June, marking a two percent increase from April. The highest disapproval ratings were documented in the inland city of Medellín, where 77 percent of respondents disapproved of his performance as president, while the lowest disapproval rating, 48 percent, was found in the city of Cartagena.
Among several other questions asked in the poll, Invamer asked respondents if they believed Petro would attempt to pursue another term in office, which is currently unConstitutional in Colombia. The poll found that 67 percent of respondents believe Petro will try to change the Colombian Constitution, while 62 percent said they believed Petro would do so specifically to stay in power.
Colombia’s current Constitution was implemented in 1991 as the result of a Constitutional process that included the participation of the Marxist M19 terrorist guerrilla. Petro has repeatedly and proudly boasted to have been a part of M19 during his youth.
Historically, the South American nation has not allowed a president to be reelected. Between 1910 and 2005, a Colombian president was only able to serve for a single term without any possibility of being reelected. In 2005, the Colombian Constitution was amended to allow a president to run for a second four-year term, allowing former conservative President Álvaro Uribe Vélez to be reelected for a second term until 2010. Uribe’s successor, Juan Manuel Santos, was also able to serve for two terms after being reelected in 2014.
The Colombian Constitution was once again amended in 2015, reversing the changes to presidential term limits and restoring the single four-year term limit.
Gustavo Petro, who took office in August 2022 and became the first leftist president in Colombia’s history, has spent almost half of his term unsuccessfully attempting to introduce leftist reforms to Colombia’s health, economic, political, labor, and social systems, none of which have passed in Congress. The reforms are unpopular – 60 percent of respondents in Invamer’s latest poll expressed disagreement with Petro’s reforms.
In March, Petro announced his plans to call for a constituent assembly that would draft a new Constitution for Colombia, which would allow him to introduce the leftist reforms that keep failing to pass on Congress at a Constitutional level. Other leftists in the region – such as Venezuela’s late dictator Hugo Chávez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa – have used similar tactics over the past two decades to override popular and congressional objections to their policies.
“If this possibility of a popularly elected government, in the midst of this State and under the Constitution of Colombia, cannot apply the Constitution because they surround it so as not to apply it and prevent it, then Colombia has to go to a National Constituent Assembly,” Petro said in March.
“The national constituent assembly must transform the institutions so that they obey the people in their mandate for peace and justice, which is easy to achieve in Colombia,” he added.
The recent calls for an assembly that would change the nation’s Constitution heavily contrast with statements issued in December 2022 and during his failed 2018 presidential campaign in which Petro denied that he would seek to change Colombia’s Constitution.
Prior to that, however, in an interview in 2017, Petro said that if he were ever elected president, the first thing he would do is to call for a referendum for the approval of a national constituent assembly.
Earlier in June, Petro claimed that he does not want to be reelected. “Nor do I believe that a constituent is the appropriate instrument yet,” he said, without ruling out the possibility in the future because, according to him, “the constituent power has to express itself”:
While Petro has claimed that he is “not interested” in the prospect of presidential reelection, Colombian Sen. Isabel Zuleta, who is part of the ruling Historic Pact leftist coalition, told local media in late May that the ruling party is promoting the initiative.
“It is not President Petro who is talking about reelection. We are many activists. We do want reelection. And we say it up front and we are promoting it,” Zuleta said.
Invamer’s poll found that 66 percent of respondents believe that Petro’s “Total Peace” plan, which includes holding peace negotiations with the country’s Marxist terrorist groups, is “on the wrong track.” Another 54 percent answered that they believe Colombia could end up in a similar situation in the future to that of neighboring Venezuela. More than half, 51 percent, also said they have given thought to the prospect of leaving Colombia.
Additionally, 69 percent of respondents answered that they believe things are going badly in Colombia; only 23 percent answered they believe the country is on the right track. A majority, 85 percent, answered that insecurity has worsened in the country, while 82 percent expressed that the cost of living has worsened as well.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.