After a first period in which The main government projects seemed stalled in Congress, Towards the end of the legislature, part of the government agenda managed to advance, although this implied moderation and prioritization of the proposals.
(Read: What comes after the collapse of the education reform?).
In the end, 33% of the projects filed by the government (8 projects: 5 filed in this legislature and 3 that came from the last one) completed the process, maintaining the same percentage of effectiveness as the last period (2022-2023).
Data from SONAR, a legislative monitoring tool from the Orza firm, show that during the 2023-2024 legislature, 675 bills were presented, of which 62.3% began their processing in the House of Representatives and 37.7% in the Senate of the Republic.
Taking into account the total number of projects filed during this legislature (675), only 25 (3.7%) were approved by the Congress of the Republic and converted into laws (5 of government origin and 20 of congressional origin). In addition, 331 were archived.
(See: Congress ended the legislature with a bittersweet taste for Petro and his reforms).
Of these projects, 319 are still ongoing and move on to the next legislature (309 are of congressional origin and only 10 are government initiatives). Most have a deadline of June 20, 2025 to become law. Among the projects filed between July 20, 2023 and June 20, 2024, which are still in process, the topics most legislated by congressmen and the government were Culture and Honors (14.42%), Education (10.34 %), Environment (10.3%) and Health (7.52%). In contrast, the topics that received the least attention were Law 5 of 1992 (0.63%), Public Services (0.63%) and Financial Affairs (0.63%).
Gonzalo Araújo, political scientist and partner of Orza.
The analysis of the results of the 2023-2024 legislature offers a revealing vision of the power dynamics between the government and Congress. In this period, 637 bills of congressional origin were presented, of which only 18 became law, which represents a 2.8% legislative success. Comparatively, of the 24 projects proposed by the Government, 5 achieved approval, which is equivalent to a 20.8% success rate.
Gonzalo Araújo, political scientist and partner at Orza, a public affairs firm, believes that this imbalance suggests a significant capacity of the government to advance its agenda. at the expense of legislative initiatives proposed by individual congressmen, revealing a clear contrast in effectiveness between proposals originating in the Executive versus those of the Legislative.
(Also: Anti-deforestation law supported by DiCaprio ‘shipwrecks’ in the Colombian Senate).
Although the balance resulted in the approval of important projects in the government’s objectives, such as the pension reform, the statutory law that defines the powers of the agrarian jurisdiction and the law to expand the debt quota, the government’s political window was not what sufficiently broad and the overload of issues, together with the difficulty of reaching agreements on time, caused other important projects to sink (the reform of the health system, the educational reform, the ordinary law on the structuring and functioning of the agrarian jurisdiction, the initiative to ban fracking and the project that seeks to overcome energy poverty and promote the energy transition in La Guajira).
“Although the Government has managed to maintain a stable effectiveness rate, the absolute number of approved initiatives was reduced, and only 8 of its 24 bills that were under discussion in this legislature were approved. This is consistent with the period in which President Petro maintained a formal coalition and, by introducing more radical structural reforms into the discussion, his window of political opportunity narrowed.”Araújo highlighted.
María Jimena Escandón, partner of the Orza firm.
The third legislature, known as “the year of Congress,” is crucial for congressmen, since it represents the moment in which they seek to accelerate the approval of their initiatives. This period is fundamental because at the end of the legislature, on June 20, 2025, senators and representatives will begin to be accountable to their voters, preparing the ground for the legislative elections of 2026. This context generates intense legislative and political activity, with congressmen under pressure to consolidate their electoral support.
María Jimena Escandón, lawyer and partner of Orza, details that the large number of projects pending second debate anticipates high congestion in the plenary sessions of the Chamber and the Senate in the next legislature (2024-2025. It will be a tense dynamic with the agenda of the national government, which will also seek to promote its priority projects.
(Also: The changes that will come for workers with the approval of the labor reform).
For the expert, it is important to keep in mind that, in addition to the projects that the government will seek to file in the next legislature, there are those that have been saved from the archive and have passed their first debate, also competing for space on the congressional agenda. This scenario will create an environment between competition and collaboration between the individual priorities of the congressmen and the objectives of the government.
Within this dynamic, the election of the board of directors will be key, since the presidents and vice-presidents of the commissions and plenary sessions of the Senate and the Chamber organize the agenda and the priority in the discussion of the projects.
“The truth is that, although significant challenges persist, the fact of achieving institutional balance and promoting governability within Congress greatly distorts President Petro’s institutional blockade thesis. Proposing a Constituent Assembly or resorting to constituent power seems a disproportionate measure when the current system still shows the capacity to function and adapt. So much so, that the next legislature will continue to give the pulse in Congress with another package of projects and new versions of those that were filed in this legislature.”highlighted María Jimena Escandón.
Gonzalo Araújo and María Jimena Escandón
Partners of the Orza firm
Add Comment