Socialist party Polo Democratic has filed a constitutional reform that could prevent President Juan Manuel Santos’ re-election, reported El Espectador Wednesday.
Senator Alexander Lopez Maya is spearheading the reform, which would “amend some articles of the constitution,” and eliminate the president’s eligibility as a candidate for re-election.
“The constitutional reform initiative presented by the Polo Democratic party aims to remove re-election from the Constitution created under President Uribe and will restore the natural balance of powers in the Constitution in its original 1991 version. It also sends a clear message to the majority of Congress in the sense that we are not willing to live with President Santos, which in the past, altered all the structures of government and allowed a corrupt regime to cling to power,” said Maya.
Lopez, along with the Chamber Representative Wilson Arias, also filed a bill “prohibiting associated work cooperatives and other forms of intermediation.”
“Both initiatives are converted to trails to the majorities in Congress that the Polo Democratic party will be a permanent participant of congressional debate and an active promoter of political control of the executive and its major initiatives in this period and opens discussion in Congress on any plans that might exist to activate the re-election project by President Santos,” explained Lopez in a statement.
Colombian presidents were allowed only one term until 2004 when Congress approved a constitutional change, allowing presidents to run for a second term. A second attempt by the Uribe-led coalition to allow a president to run for a third term was turned down by the Constitutional Court in 2010.