The president of Colombia, the leftist Gustavo Petro, received his main political adversary and natural leader of the right, former president Álvaro Uribe, at the Casa de Nariño to discuss some of the reforms planned by the new government.
Tuesday’s meeting between Petro and Uribe, who led Colombia from 2002 to 2010, came a few hours after the first social marches summoned by the right to show the rejection of Petro’s reform plan.
What did you talk about?
* Tax system: The first of the topics of conversation was the tax reform bill, with which the Government seeks to raise an additional 25 billion pesos (about 5,550 million dollars) in the budget, to finance the social plans of President Gustavo Petro. Regarding the proposal, Uribe said that the reform is “unnecessary” but that they will respect it.
President Petro, for his part, pointed out that all proposals will be evaluated to achieve the best possible tax reform that achieves the best income.
* Sanitary reform: Another of the reforms that aroused the interest of the talk was the announced health reform, which has not yet been officially presented for discussion. For now, it has been Minister Carolina Corcho herself, who has announced that the proposal seeks to put an end to the Health Promoting Entities (EPS), which are in charge of organizing and guaranteeing the provision of medical services in Colombia. .
Petro, listened to the position of the leader of the right regarding this initiative that would be processed in Congress for the first half of 2023.
* Pension reform: Regarding the pension system, the Duke said that he raised several concerns that President Petro and the Minister of the Interior, Alfonso Padra, who accompanied the meeting, received with respect.
Petro has said that the reform seeks greater pension coverage, and that its objective is to grant a pension bonus of 500,000 Colombian pesos (around 110 dollars) to those older adults who were unable to access a secure pension. This would be achieved through the pillar system, which means that Colombians contribute to the two regimes that currently operate -a public fund and a private one- where the first two minimum wages would fall on the public system and the private would receive those contributors. that exceed 3 minimum wages, which are equivalent to 690 dollars.
Uribe said that he shared with the government his concern about the pension reform and that he expressed the need to “make adjustments” so as not to generate a “disruption of the private pension funds that have worked perfectly.”
* Agrarian reform: The former president said that he accompanies the government’s position of buying land that is not producing to deliver it to peasants who work it. The executive had announced last week that between September and November he will deliver 681,000 hectares of land to 12,000 peasants, indigenous and Afro-descendant communities.
* Military in the JEP: The president revealed at the end of the meeting that he insisted to Petro on the need to reform the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), in order to give the Armed Forces a different treatment.
The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) is the justice component of the Comprehensive System of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-Repetition, created by the peace accords between the former FARC guerrilla and the Government of former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018).
The main objective of the JEP is to administer transitional justice, that is, the set of judicial decisions that a society adopts to move from conflict to peace and recognize systematic violations of human rights, victims and promote reconciliation. The JEP focuses on the most serious and representative crimes that were committed during the armed conflict by the different actors that participated in them.
“When the opposition announces itself as a constructive opposition, it has to be an opposition that knows how to dialogue, that knows how to oppose with arguments, that knows how to criticize with reasons, that knows how to listen and that is also willing to reach agreements,” Uribe said.
This is the second meeting held by the two most important political leaders in Colombia, in the midst of a tense and polarized environment that has marked Colombian politics since the last presidential elections last August.
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