Colombia: the referendum has failed – let’s escalate the struggle!

On Wednesday 14 May, the Colombian Senate rejected a proposal for a referendum to vote on key aspects of the labour reform proposed by the Pacto Histórico, the ruling coalition composed of left-wing parties.

[Originally published in Spanish at colombiamarxista.com]

Since then, the situation has escalated across the country. The anger that has been brewing in the streets since 18 March – when Congress initially blocked the labour reform – is being expressed through mass demonstrations and cabildos (open assemblies) across the country called by the Pacto Histórico. The cabildo in Bogotá on Monday 18 May, concluded with a proposal for a two-day national shutdown (28 and 29 May) and another 24-hour shutdown on 11 June.

The struggle for reforms over the last two and a half years is reaching a decisive stage. A period of struggle is looming in which President Gustavo Petro’s programme, tactics, and strategy will be put to the test as he tries to overcome the obstacles imposed by the oligarchy.

The tricks of the oligarchy

The Colombian ruling class has used all the powers it has through the state institutions and the press to stop the reforms that Petro and the Pacto Histórico were elected to implement. The Constitutional Court is discussing how to kill the pension reform before it is implemented, whereas the health reform has only been implemented, with concessions, through executive decrees.

The latest outrage, however, has been the sabotage of the labour reform. After being approved by the House of Representatives, eight senators from the Seventh Committee voted to table it in mid-March. These eight senators represent the traditional parties of the Colombian oligarchy, such as the Democratic Centre and the Conservative Party.

In response, the government proposed a ‘popular consultation’ (a non-binding referendum) that would allow the masses to vote on the key aspects of the reforms, in order to put them back on Congress’ agenda. The proposed consultation would include 12 questions, covering a reduction in the working day, extra pay for hours worked after 6pm, double pay for work on public holidays and Sundays, medical leave for menstrual issues, an increase in the quota of contracts for people with disabilities, employment contracts for students on internships, lower interest loans for cooperatives and small businesses, bargaining rights for contractors working for Uber and other transport platforms, outsourcing through union contracts, and the formalisation of the work of rural workers and domestic workers.

A survey showed that the plan for a popular consultation is supported by 57 percent of Colombians / Image: public domain

A survey showed that the plan for a popular consultation is supported by 57 percent of Colombians, despite the president's low approval rating. Even more striking is the fact that all questions have at least 75 percent support, with the question on working hours receiving 80 percent approval and the question about the formalisation of work with access to social security for all types of employees reaching 95 percent.

The poll also shows that 43 percent of those consulted were prepared to participate in the consultation, exceeding the minimum threshold of 33 percent (equivalent to 13 million Colombians) required for the consultation to return the questions to Congress.

When the proposal for a popular consultation reached parliament, the response of the oligarchy's parties (from the centrist Green Party to the Uribistas of the Democratic Centre) was to reject it and ‘revive’ the labour reform to be discussed and voted on again, with just five weeks before the end of the legislative session. This ‘revival’ is a smokescreen intended to make it seem like Petro is unwilling to work with the institutions of state while delaying it in endless parliamentary procedure, instead of taking it directly to the masses with the ‘popular consultation’.

The vote to reject the consultation was passed by a margin of 49 to 47 votes. There were all kinds of irregularities in this vote. Among these, it is worth noting that Senator Ciro Ramírez, of the Democratic Centre, had just emerged from a lawsuit against him for corruption, was accepted back into office at the last minute to help win the ‘no’ vote. Similarly, the president of the Senate closed the vote as soon as there was a majority, excluding Martha Peralta of the Pacto Histórico.

Efrain Cepeda, the self-proclaimed “head of the gang to sink the reforms”, declared that “democracy has spoken in the Senate”. However, his idea of ‘democracy’ is scandalous. How can a Senate where opposition representatives have won their seats through vote buying and clientelism be called democratic? Isn't this the same institution that enjoys the approval of 10 percent of the population? Whose interests do these self-proclaimed democrats really defend?

These anti-democratic tricks demonstrate the rotten character of bourgeois ‘democracy’ in Colombia. The masses can fill the streets for years and vote, in their millions, for a president to implement a concrete political programme. But the oligarchy will use the institutions of the state and its thousands of connections with senators to pull the strings according to its own needs.

The motive of the opposition

It is clear why the ruling class is fighting tooth and nail to prevent the reforms from passing. The reality is that the Colombian economy is stagnant. If the oligarchy were in the driver’s seat, they would do everything possible to implement austerity measures to make the working class pay for this stagnation.

However, due to the mobilisations of the last five years – the national shutdowns of 2019 and 2021 – the oligarchy has had to mount a campaign to sabotage all the reformists’ measures instead of going on the offensive and cutting as they would like. 

However, there is also another factor fuelling the opposition's campaign. The reality is that the Pacto Histórico is pursuing a policy of class conciliation.

This is partly because this coalition does not have a majority in the legislature. It has 35 out of 108 senators and 69 out of 188 representatives. While these numbers put it ahead of any other party, it means that it does not have the majority needed to pass reforms without negotiation. Their search for agreements with the parties of the oligarchy has been constantly frustrated.

Despite his combative rhetoric, Petro has attempted to reconfigure his cabinet on the basis of agreements with the political establishment / Image: public domain

At the beginning of his government, Petro, in search of a ‘national agreement’, attempted to form a cabinet with representation from all parties, including former political enemies such as Alejandro Gaviria, health minister during the Santos presidency and an establishment presidential candidate. This led to a highly unstable cabinet, which has seen 38 ministers come and go.

However, this is not just a personnel problem. The intransigent opposition of the oligarchy is being confronted by a conciliatory campaign on the part of the Pacto Histórico. Despite his combative rhetoric, Petro has attempted to reconfigure his cabinet on the basis of agreements with the political establishment.

Juan Fernando Cristo, the former interior minister (responsible for pushing Petro’s agenda in the Senate and Congress), was the clearest example of this. Cristo was also a minister under President Santos, and the goal of his short stay in the Casa de Nariño, home of the Colombian government, was to generate a broad ‘national agreement’.

This strategy is not working precisely because the Colombian oligarchy cannot afford to give ground on this issue. On the one hand, the reforms would represent a direct attack on their privileges and wealth: the agrarian reform would undermine their monopoly on land; the labour reform would affect the profits derived from the wage cuts imposed by the 2002 counter-reform; and the health reform would hit the profits of the big private healthcare monopolies like the Health Promotion Companies (EPS), among others. 

On the other hand, the fact that these reforms have been driven by five years of mass mobilisations – which took on an insurrectionary character on two occasions – would mean that their implementation would encourage the masses to remain on the offensive and aspire to even greater gains. For these reasons, the oligarchy will never negotiate or accept a compromise.

The ideal scenario for the oligarchy is to wage a relentless campaign to block the reforms until Petro’s storm blows over and they can return to ‘normality’. The truth is that the president's conciliatory policy has only served to encourage the oligarchy to go on the offensive.

Referendum 2.0

The Pacto Histórico's response to the collapse of the plan for a referendum has been to call for “permanent mobilisation”. This slogan has translated into a series of cabildos. At the second such meeting, held at the National Pedagogical University, the workers' unions proposed a national shutdown on 28 and 29 May in support of the referendum. It is important to note that several speakers suggested an indefinite national shutdown.

This escalation is entirely necessary and justified. Over the last two and a half years, Gustavo Petro's government has tried to use all the institutional avenues outlined in the 1991 constitution. Yet the opposition of the oligarchy has been unyielding.

Now that Petro is looking to the masses to assist in passing the reforms, all the leaders of the right are whining about ‘polarisation’ / Image: public domain

Now that Petro is looking to the masses to assist in passing the reforms, all the leaders of the right are whining about ‘polarisation’. They declare that all these methods involving citizen participation are a symptom of the government's unwillingness to negotiate, even though they are the ones sabotaging the reforms at every turn.

The other component to the government's response has been to resubmit the popular consultation to Congress and propose four additional questions regarding the health care reform. Certainly, if the plan for a consultation were to be allowed by the Senate under the pressure of a huge mobilisation, it would give the working class an opportunity to raise its voice about the key issues of the reforms.

But it is also of the utmost importance to explain that the struggle for formal and indefinite contracts, the reduction of the working day, and for increased wages on Sundays, public holidays and night work will not be resolved through the same state institutions that have blocked them.

Even if the proposal is passed by the Senate, the oligarchy will remain on the defensive and use all the resources at its disposal (from the media to its control of state institutions) to prevent the reforms from passing, precisely because of their popularity. With this in mind, it is necessary to keep the cabildos open and the strike committees on their feet. We must be vigilant and ready to fight. Only by trusting in the strength of the working class can we respond to the opposition of the oligarchy.

The way forward

The reformists' plan for a permanent mobilisation campaign beginning with a national shutdown is entirely correct. But we must remember that this is a response to the pressure coming from below. The union leaders clearly wanted to direct the entire struggle toward the parliamentary arena, but the oligarchy's campaign of sabotage forced the rank and file of the large unions and of the neighbourhood organisations to go further.

This instinct is entirely correct. Involving the masses in the fight for these reforms is the only way to overcome the obstacles that the opposition is placing in front of the movement.

The main point on the agenda of each cabildo must be the creation of a network of popular assemblies that can act as real organs for coordinating the struggle on every front that the oligarchy opens against the reforms. They must form organs to coordinate mass demonstrations, strikes, walkouts, blockades, etc., according to reports from their members on the situation in each area.

However, as communists, we also emphasise that the cabildos themselves are an embryonic form of a higher democracy than the popular consultation and the Congress of the Republic. The popular consultation can only reaffirm what the mobilisations of the last five years have shown: that the vast majority in this country – made up of workers, peasants and youth – want to transform society from the root and place its wealth at the service of the masses.

The cabildos have the potential to go beyond the popular consultation and to become organs for the same masses who are fighting tirelessly for reforms to directly carry them into effect themselves. This cannot be done through a campaign to pressure Congress, but only by the workers taking control of their own destinies in the workplaces. 

If there is a national shutdown in 2025, it must be taken into every workplace, and coordinated with a campaign of unionisation and the formation of strike committees, raising the struggle in the streets beyond merely forming barricades, as we explained back in 2021.

At that time, the youth fought heroically, inspiring the whole movement. However, they were worn down by a lack of organisation, which led them to a dead end and a sterile stalemate with a government on the verge of collapse.

One of the participants in the cabildo that took place on 19 May rightly pointed out the need to organise the demonstration with organisational mechanisms that would guarantee the continuity and effectiveness of the struggle, with the perspective of an indefinite national shutdown. He emphasised that this was precisely what was lacking during the Estallido in 2021.

Involving the masses in the fight for these reforms is the only way to overcome the obstacles that the opposition is placing in front of the movement / Image: public domain

The debates in the cabildos have produced two positions. On the one hand, the leaders of the trade union confederations are proposing two days of national shutdown action to increase pressure on Congress, and are adding the possibility of a third shutdown in mid-June.

However, several participants in the cabildo meeting on 19 May proposed the need for an indefinite national shutdown until the reforms are achieved. This is the way forward, as the reforms will not be achieved on the basis of a campaign subordinate to and merely in support of the negotiations in Congress. The main route is precisely through the shutdown.

The reality is that the only way to achieve reforms is through a relentless militant struggle against the Colombian oligarchy. It clearly refuses to give up its privileges and wealth without a fight. But the struggle of the Colombian working class cannot stop at reforms. As long as attempts are made to manage capitalism, future crises will brew and the eternal cycle will repeat itself.

It is necessary to overthrow the corrupt capitalist oligarchy that currently controls the commanding heights of the economy for its own enrichment, condemning the rest of society to subsistence wages and a healthcare system designed to profit from the illness and deaths of millions of people.

Only on this basis can the working class take control of the system and establish genuine democracy that guarantees full economic and political freedom for the masses. In this way, we can sweep the oligarchy into the dustbin of history once and for all.

Down with Efrain Cepeda and the opposition gang!

Defeat the oligarchy, fight for socialism!

Strike in order to advance!