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After the results he obtained in the second round and the fact that he accepted the Senate seat provided for in the Statute of the Opposition that President Juan Manuel Santos sanctioned on Monday, Gustavo Petro is declared Leader of the Opposition. 19659002] But because other senators like Jorge Enrique Robledo will have their own direction, for the rights that the Statute gives to the other parties who declare in the opposition and because the Greens have not yet been defined between being independent or opposition, Petro will have a rise to be the leader of a grand coalition in Congress that opposes the government of Ivan Duque.
The Teeth of the Statute
The Statute of the Opposition which was approved last year in Congress as one of the laws that landed the point of the political participation of the & # 39; 39; Peace Agreement and which was sanctioned Monday, settle the historic debt of the state to give guarantees and rights to the political forces that are in opposition Ion to the current government
The Congress which will be installed on July 20 will debut this status that will give teeth to the parties that declare themselves in opposition to the Duque government.
Those who do will have, among other things, the right to receive more funds, to oppose presidential speeches, to respond to the President on the day of the inauguration of the Congress, to appoint a representative to the councils of 39, administer plenary sessions of the House and Senate, influence Plenary, and have better access to the media.
These rights reconfigure the power in Congress and open the possibility that the ten senators of the Green Party, the five of the Pole, the four of the List of Decency, the five members of the party Farc, Feliciano Valencia of the party But (which was elected by a special indigenous constituency and was part of the Humana Colombia campaign) and Petro, who added 26 senators to join a counterweight to the official Duque coalition in the Legislative Assembly.
As in the law, only the parties have legal personality rights. The List of Decency, being a coalition of parties, does not receive the benefits, but the parties that compose it do so. That is to say, the Patriotic Union, the But party and ASI
In the case of Petro, as he was elected senator because the Statute dictates, the movement with which he has been thrown into the presidency will surely receive a legal status Automatic
For the moment, it does not seem easy to achieve unity and unless there is a single leader who is at the head of a coalition between the different parties.
Double-edged teeth
Senators are on vacation and it is only in the coming days that the parties will meet to decide if they declare themselves in opposition, and three parties have decided to do so: the List of Decency, the FARC and the Polo.
On the side of "Decent", Farc and some of the Polo and Greens congressmen, the idea of building a peace bench between the different parties around the themes that unite them: the implementation of peace agreements and the fight against corruption.
"The ideal would be to arrive at unity", Gustavo Bolívar, the elected Senator of the List of Decencies, told De La Silla that "Decentes" is betting on the creation of This union and although they believe that the leader He should be Petro for the 8 million votes that he withdrew, knowing that other senators like Robledo will compete for this leadership.
But several reasons thwart the bet of a broad coalition of the opposition.
They are divided into two groups: on the one hand, there are those who believe that the Party must declare itself in opposition to enjoy the benefits of the Statute and be part of this caucus of peace, among them they find the closest senators elected to Petro as Angelica Lozano and Antonio Sanguino and the representative Inti Asprilla.
A source of greens told La Silla that in the second group are senators elected Iván Ma rulanda and Antanas Mockus and representatives Katherine Miranda and Mauricio Toro, among others, who prefer to declare themselves independent to maintain a central position [19659004] Some of the Greens also do not have the idea of being part of an opposition. Petro will try to present himself as a leader and spokesperson. They believe that if they remain subject to Humana Colombia they will lose the identity that makes them strong to compete in 2019 for town halls and governors.
In the Polo, which has already sent the statement to be part of the opposition, the idea that there only one opposition leader does not sound either.
"We must unite with other parties to oppose certain issues, we must coordinate because it would be absurd to disperse efforts. But the idea is that every party has its right of reply and its votes, "said La Silla, Alexander López, senator of Polo
" It has not yet been defined within the party to what will the voices look like? But in principle, these voices would alternate. There will not be a single leader of the opposition. If Petro and Robledo think of standing alone, they do not think of a unified but personal process. "
" What I hope is that there are agreements for political control debates, to vote or not to vote. ..) the opposition should make efforts to make agreements on specific issues, "said Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo in La Silla.
In an interview this week, Robledo also said that Petro would not not the only leader of the opposition and that each party would keep its independence.
If this great bench for peace is not reached or if it is not possible to reach to an agreement that generates unity among the groups, the opposition to Duque may prove less effective and less energetic in Congress.One of the strengths of the Democratic Center in the legislatures past was his discipline to always act en bloc.
In any case, they will have to organize to make use of the rights conferred on them by the Statute because all the parties will have the same rights, the law does not specify with what criteria will be defined that will be part of the advice or how will be distributed the different domains of replication that are envisaged in the law.
The more parties are declared in the opposition, the more spokespeople will be, the less funding for each, as they will have to share the 5% that will increase opposition party funding and less time for replicas and spaces in the media.
To negotiate how the spokesman will be divided and representation in the different spaces of the Petro line will appeal to the 8 million votes that it took in the second round, which already at first they badume that They are theirs if they were made in alliance with greens like Claudia López or Antanas Mockus or Senators of the Pole like Iván Cepeda.
The other parties will use other arguments such as the number of seats that they have attained in Congress and the votes that their congressmen have taken, which disadvantage Petro's movement.
In any case, Congress is one of the scenarios that Petro will use to oppose Duque, and if you want, one of the least important Well, as announced the day of his defeat, the Congress will be only the platform from which he will summon the social movements to what he called "resistance". Your real opposition will be on the street.
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