The “Decreteazo” of popular consultation with which Petro challenges the Colombia Congress and can lead to a constitutional crisis

Petro, claiming irregularities, had considered that the decision of the Senate on the popular consultation was not valid and that, therefore, it could decree it.

The jurists and specialists consulted by BBC Mundo consider that it is not the decision of the president to act on a vote of the Senate and that this corresponds to justice.

Hours before the announcement, Interior Minister Armando Benedetti said that, if the labor reform approximately approve before June 20, a deadline before holiday closing, the decree would be repealed.

And, after announcing Petro the firm, Benedetti explained that it was signed this Wednesday because on Thursday the deadline ended to do so.

“The President trusts the Senate and the agreements to which they can be reached by restoring the labor rights of the working class,” added the minister.

The nickname “Decreteazo” is the most serious chapter in the prolonged confrontation that Petro and Congress are practically since the beginning of his mandate in August 2022.

Petro, the first president of the left of Colombia, arrived with great ambitions of change, but most reforms have not been able to realize due to lack of consensus.

Now he launches this challenge to Congress that, for critics, threatens to break the constitutional order.

The most fervent followers of Petro, both on the street and within their party, support a measure that they consider necessary to generate the changes that believe the country, characterized by its political conservatism and a high labor informality, little productivity and long hours of work according to several standards.

However, jurists and analysts consider it a dangerous movement by the president.

“The announced decree that conveys a consultation that had been denied by the Senate is a clear violation of the Constitution. The Executive cannot cancel acts of Congress. That task corresponds to justice,” said a few days ago in X Humberto de la Calle, a voice with extensive experience in other governments and in constitutional law and important piece of the last constitutional reform of Colombia in 1991.

Among the reasons why Petro and his followers consider that the vote of the Senate was not valid are that 96 votes were recorded when there were 97 congressmen present, that the vote lasted only 10% of the normal or that a change in the direction of the vote was unknown, among others.

They are arguments considered insufficient by analysts consulted by BBC Mundo.

“Petro's position is very legally answering and does not convince the majority of jurists. It gives the impression that he flees forward in his pulse with Congress,” Yann Basset, a political scientist at the University of Rosario in Colombia, tells BBC Yann Bbc.

The experts interviewed by BBC Mundo believe that, regardless of whether the consultation is repealed or not according to what the Congress does with the labor reform, it will have little route.

“It is clear that it will fall because we must demonstrate that all the vices of unconstitutionality that Petro denounces really happened. I think it will fall into the Constitutional Court for its own weight,” explains BBC Mundo Laura Bonilla, deputy director of the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation.

Several opinion leaders in Colombia share that the “Decreteazo” is a Petro strategy to press Congress to expedite reform approval, while the government's time runs out of the 2026 elections.

But, in the same way, analysts believe that there is already “a dangerous red line” crossed by the president, according to Basset.

“Although safeguarding that will respect the Court's decision, this is problematic regarding the division of powers and scale the conflict. In full pre -campaign there is a radicalization of the president who can generate a serious institutional effect,” says the academic.

In any case, it will be justice and other administrative procedures who will have the last word, regardless of opinions and interpretations of experts.

Miguel Uribe Turbay, the candidate that was shot on Saturday, is a renowned critic of Decree and Petro.

Opposition and senator for the Democratic Center Party, filmed a video to be published once the president would formalize the firm.

“The decree goes against the Constitution and puts democracy at risk. It is a state autogolpe,” says the senator in a video released from his X account.

Many Colombians already pointed to Petro the most responding sectors of the opposition to polarize the political debate in which the attack against Uribe Turbay was framed.

Vicky Dávila, another right -wing presidential candidate, said in X that “in the midst of the pain of Colombians for the crime against Miguel Uribe and the chain of terrorist attacks in the country (in reference to recent attacks without authorship confirmed in southwest Colombia), Gustavo Petro takes another step against democracy.”

On Tuesday, through the Justice Platform, a Center for Legal and Social Studies in Bogotá, 24 organizations of varied political spectrum also asked the president to refrain from his decision.

“We are convinced that the mechanisms of citizen participation, such as consultation, are legitimate expression of popular sovereignty (…) However, convening popular consultation by decree is a decision that is based on an illegal interpretation that erodes the separation of powers,” says the statement.

“The possible irregularities in the Senate's refusal to convene the consultation must be resolved by the competent judges, and not by the president,” continues the text.

In a context in which Petro seems to lose popular support in the street and where his reforms do not specify, Bonilla thinks that the president's real objective is to maintain a peak political environment for the next elections, where he aspires to continue his project with his successor.

“He wants to impose his media agenda in the country and I think he is already winning that,” says Bonilla.

In a week in which Colombia remembered the worst times of political violence after the attack on Uribe Turbay, the debate, it is true, has revolved around the president and his maneuvers.

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