This Saturday, in special sessions, the House of Representatives of Colombia gave its approval to the text of the penal reform that the Senate had endorsed, in response to a request from the Constitutional Court for procedural defects.

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The legislative chamber approved it with 104 votes in favour and nine against, the request made by members of the Historical Pact to accept the text of the pension reform approved by the Senate, seeking to speed up the legislative process and avoid a conciliation.

President Gustavo Petro welcomed the approval of this reform, one of his key proposals, through his X account saying: “We have triumphed. Long live the grandmothers and grandparents of Colombia. The pension reform has been approved. I have fulfilled and the House of Representatives has fulfilled.”

Petro has stated that this reform could achieve 100 per cent total coverage between pensions and retirement bonds of senior citizens over a two-year period.

The proposal does not provide for an increase in the retirement age, which will remain at 57 for women and 62 for men.

The pension reform, one of the most prominent social projects of the Petro government, aims to expand the system’s coverage through a four-pillar scheme, ranging from support for seniors without pensions to voluntary contributions.

The House of Representatives had already approved the pension reform in the middle of last year, however, the Constitutional Court returned it to Congress, which ordered a procedural error to be rectified so that it could enter into force.

The ruling of the Constitutional Court was heard only three days before the end of the legislative period, on the Friday of the previous week, and set a period of 30 working days to rectify the case, So Petro called the members of the House to extraordinary sessions on the eve to resume the debate.

The required quorum of a quarter of the MPs could not be met on Friday because the opposition parties said that no official notification of the Tribunal’s verdict had been obtained and that, without it, holding sessions was illegal.

Although the quorum was obtained in this Saturday’s session, the opposition parties Cambio Radical and Centro Democrático did not participate and complained, respectively, that the summons “was not carried out correctly” so that the procedure under such circumstances would be a “acting out of privilege.”

With this Saturday’s vote, the Representatives would have solved the procedural problem, and the pension reform would be ready to be approved by Petro.

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