The Government of Abelardo De La Espriella managed to carry out the budget in the Senate and is aimed at the House accepts the same text and in this way it is avoided that the first budget of the new administration has to be issued by decree. This, because It is only available until October 20before midnight, to have a budget approved and reconciled by both corporations.
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It is a strategy that the Legislature had already used last year. To prevent Gustavo Petro issued his last budget by decreewithout the changes that Congress managed to make in the first debate, it was agreed that the House would vote on an article and then it was adopted by the Senate. Now it will be done the other way around: the Senate approved first and the House will accept the same proposal to rule out the definition by presidential order of resources for next year.
This Monday was not an easy day for the Executive, especially in the Chamber. The president’s words on Sunday against the San Andres representative Elizabeth Jay-Pangof the Liberal Party,—in which accused her of alleged mismanagement of resources in his department—awakened the solidarity of his caucus, which decided not to participate in a good part of the day. The absence of said sector, which has 24 seats, helped The Historical Pact could stop the discussions by managing to break the quorum on repeated occasions.
Minister of Finance, Miguel Gómez, defends the General Budget of the Nation 2027 in Congress Photo:Laura Juliana Castellanos Guevara
Throughout the morning, discussion of the impediments became impossible. The reds and the left left the premises and They avoided obtaining the minimum quorum so that the voted decisions were binding. To prevent the session from being adjourned due to lack of quorum and the budget having to be issued by decree, The president of the Chamber, Nicolás Barguil, suspended the session and called several recesses. These pauses were taken advantage of by the Minister of the Interior, Rodrigo Larato talk to liberals.
The first meetings were unsuccessful. The red representatives were very upset with what the president said. Although it resumed, They did not participate in the voting and the minimum number of votes was not achieved. Given the risk of definitively ending the discussion, around 2:30 in the afternoon a new suspension was made. This time it was until 8 at night. With a margin of six hours, Minister Lara met again with the liberals.
He was then seen in the Senate plenary session around 4 in the afternoon. By that time had reached an agreement. The discussion was going to move forward in said corporation and the House would resume in the eveningat the time set by Barguil. To avoid having to go through conciliation, it was agreed that said corporation would resume voting on the impediments and would proceed with the discussion until a text was ready to be accepted and published in the Congressional Gazette. In this way, defects in the procedure and possible lawsuits against the budget were avoided.
Nicolás Barguil, president of the House of Representatives. Photo:House of Representatives
The representatives, who were on recess, realized what the Government was looking for. For this reason, they decided not to present their proposals in their respective corporation, but rather took advantage of the pause to present their proposals in the Senatesince they knew that it would be that text that would be accepted. An example was that of the representative Catherine Juvinaoof the Green Alliance; This moved to the homologous plenary session and obtained the signatures and tax endorsement for your proposal for more resources for the Icetex. Other legislators tried the same move, but did not have the same result.
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The accounts showed that by 8 p.m. the Senate was going to have the entire vote ready. The strategy was to group the articles into large blocks and in this way speed up the discussion. However, The opposition insisted that there be greater debate and the hour passed little by little. There were even discussions that were reopened to avoid defects that would allow the budget to be sued.
The most critical points in the discussion were the articles that They gave extraordinary powers to President Abelardo De La Espriella for move surplus items to the Miracle Fund. Likewise, there was controversy over a proposal from Democratic Centerwhich was endorsed by the Executive, for cut 11,000 million pesos more to the JEP. Attention was also drawn to some modifications in the regionalized budget.
After the approval of the budget in the Senate, we were waiting for it to be bypass the procedure in the Chamber to accept the same proposal.
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