🗞️ Last Tuesday, thousands of people took to the streets of cities across Colombia to demonstrate in favour of the upcoming referendum on government reforms.
President Gustavo Petro gave a speech in Bogotá launching the referendum campaign, using the opportunity to criticise the senators who voted down the labour reform this week - accusing them of betraying the Colombian people ‘for greed and for money.’
Later this year, the Colombian electorate will be asked to vote on elements of both the labour reform and the health reform. The referendum provides a way to push through the government’s legislative agenda even in the face of congressional resistance and dwindling time left in their term. If the majority vote ‘yes’ to the provisions on the ballot, Congress will be obliged to expedite them into law.
“The times in which the people were defeated, in which the people were humiliated, are over,” Petro said, and referenced Gabriel García Márquez, "It is time to put an end to one hundred years of solitude.”
🗞️ Sit-ins and roadblocks were staged this week due to shortages of vital medications in multiple cities including Bogotá and Cali: many patients have waited months for medications which they still have not been provided.
The situation heightened tensions between the President and health service providers (EPSs), whom he accuses of hoarding drugs and has threatened with raids on dispensaries if the shortages continue.
The National Federation of Traders (Fenalco) denies that providers have hoarded drugs or inflated prices, blaming accumulated debt and cash flow issues.
🗞️ Finance Minister Diego Guevara resigned last Tuesday - after just four months in the post. Petro has had 52 ministers and 126 deputy ministers in two and a half years of government.
Guevara’s replacement, Petro’s fourth finance minister, is Germán Avila, an economist and (like Petro himself) a former member of the M-19 guerrilla group.
Though inflation is low and both employment and growth are up, the new finance minister faces the challenges of the country’s substantial fiscal deficit and debt, disagreements over which were reportedly the causes of Guevara’s departure.
🗞️ A BBC documentary has accused Colombia’s state hydrocarbon company Ecopetrol of ignoring alarming pollution at and around their facilities - a case dubbed ‘the Iguana Papers.’
The documentary focuses on Andrés Olarte, an Ecopetrol oil-engineer-turned-activist and whistle-blower. He reports receiving death threats shortly after leaving the company, having questioned the environmental impact of activities.
The investigation into Ecopetrol’s practices alleges failure to report methane emissions, pollution of the wetlands of the Magdalena River, and surveillance of environmental activists critical of the company’s activities.
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