The new health reform, the future of employment and housing loans: the national agreement goes to the table

The first half of Gustavo Petro’s presidential term was marked by his bid to change the structure of the Colombian health system. Turned into the main point of political friction in the country, the president sacrificed a broad legislative coalition and a heterogeneous cabinet in pursuit of it, and failed. For the beginning of the second part of his four-year term, Petro has taken up the idea of ​​reaching a national agreement, has delegated his political landing to a new and centrist Minister of the Interior and has obtained a first major result with an agreement with the bankers. This week, three events will help reveal the solidity of a bet that could lead the country to a climate of less political confrontation, but which crashes not only with the precedent of the health reform, but with the reality of a government that has as its main goal to leave a deep mark on the country – not in vain does it call itself the government of change -, difficult situations in the economy and security, and an electoral campaign that is already looming.

It will be the health reform that will be the biggest test for the very notion of a national agreement. Juan Fernando Cristo, the Minister of the Interior who has led the meetings with various parties to bring this agreement to the legislative world, has indicated that it is one of the three main projects of the Government for this session, and that the text will be submitted this week. His colleague in Health, Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo, has said that he has reconciled the new text with the private sector, something that the main unions in the sector have denied. That, and the fact that Jaramillo had staunchly defended the reform that Congress rejected less than five months ago, mark the challenge that the idea of ​​a national agreement faces with the expected submission of a text that is unknown for now.

Although this is the most visible front of the evidence that the president’s conciliatory policy is accumulating, it can also be postponed. In fact, the Government had announced the presentation of the project for the previous week. While that is happening, another of last year’s reforms, which is still in force in Congress, is resuming its process this Monday. It is the labor reform, which with the health and pension reforms – which were approved after a negotiation led by the Minister of Labor, Gloria Inés Ramírez – make up the triad of proposals to reformulate the world of work and social security. The labor reform overcame one of the four debates it needs to become law thanks to Ramírez, a unionist and communist politician with extensive experience in reaching agreements with businessmen, and will now be processed in the plenary session of the Chamber.

In that case, the challenge is not to push the proposal through. It has already lost part of its scope due to the negotiations prior to the first debate, when Ramírez sacrificed changes in collective matters, such as union negotiations, in exchange for maintaining individual improvements, such as higher pay for working on Sundays. In addition, the Government has proven to have the majorities on its side in the House of Representatives, unlike in the Senate, where they have eluded it. The test is more narrative: whether the Executive will seek to put those majorities in motion as a steamroller that allows it to move quickly with this reform to face discussions of more complex projects, or whether it will open spaces for agreement like those that Cristo, the minister of politics who has a long parliamentary career, has promoted and that although they may delay the labor process, would support the general framework of agreement.

The third major challenge of the national agreement policy is external to the Capitol and the legislative debates. It is the necessary landing of the credit pact, the agreement with the bankers to inject 55 billion pesos in the next 18 months to five strategic sectors of the economy, in concrete plans. In a press conference in which they presented details of the pact, the president of the banking union, Jonathan Malagón, and the Minister of Finance, Ricardo Bonilla, conceded that this week the first of the sectoral tables will be launched to achieve this specificity. It is about housing, a sector of which Malagón was minister in the Government of the conservative Iván Duque and in which, in the words of Bonilla, it is easy to reach agreements. In effect, the different governments have been encouraging credit for the purchase and construction of homes for more than half a century, due to the positive impact of this activity on employment and on a long chain of necessary products, from cement or steel to household appliances.

However, the devil is in the details. The Petro government went so far as to modify the system used by Duque, especially through subsidies for home purchases, and it took so many months to implement its own policies that the sector was strongly affected and the minister, Catalina Velasco, ended up leaving the Cabinet. With companies both resentful of this government and largely dependent on the flow of public money to facilitate home purchases, the concrete agreements reached at the table set the course for the other beneficiaries (tourism, industry, agriculture and the popular economy, which is more the set of small businesses in any branch) and the tone of the negotiations.

In the first months of his mandate, President Gustavo Petro managed to push through a very ambitious tax reform in record time, agree with the private sector on a way to reduce energy rates, and agree with cattle ranchers to buy land for agrarian reform. These were times of openness, of moderate ministers and meetings with former President Álvaro Uribe, his political nemesis for years. That tone lasted just over six months, and then came his break with the political center and a tone of confrontation and tension. Almost two years later, in which he has suffered heavy political defeats such as the health reform, has carried the weight of scandals that have affected his firstborn, his right-hand man and his brother, has seen the economy stagnate and his popularity erode, the first left-wing president of contemporary Colombia has once again waved the flag of concertation. The first steps have been promising, but the road is long, the wounds are evident and the 2026 elections are already looming on the political horizon.

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