Around 10 p.m. on Wednesday, May 3, the speaker of the House of Representatives, David Raceroannounced that the debate on the National Development Plan (PND) and will resume around 8 in the morning on Thursday the 4th of the same month.
Around 7 p.m., the House of Representatives a block of 87 articles were approved as they came in the presentation and with the endorsed propositions, thanks to a vote of 126 in favor and 31 against.
An hour later, 79 representatives to the Camera voted in favor of a proposition to delete article 218, with which Ecopetrol would have the capacity to deliver energy (currently it cannot do so) since it is the owner of the majority of the shares of ISA (SAESP Electrical Interconnection); in the Senate the article also sank. The article generated a strong discussion in the plenary, since the congressmen stopped using their microphones and began to raise their voices in protest against this point of the National Development Plan.
In the House, as in the Senate, item fell off which allowed the creation of National Agency for Digital Security and Space Affairssince many congressmen affirmed that this new entity could facilitate the famous “shots”.
After 9 p.m., too sank article 329which was going to allow the creation of extraordinary faculties to the President Gustavo Petro to develop the national forest service and create an entity to exercise the functions of administrator.
Something that has bothered some members of the House of Representatives is that they have tried to discuss point by point the National Development Planwhile in Congress there have been more times en bloc votes on the articles, for which David Racero promised more time to be able to examine the PND more carefully and thus, achieve a conciliation on Friday, May 5 at 9 in the morning.
The Senate plenary approved with 71 votes in favor and 10 against the National Development Plan of the president Gustavo Petro. Now, all that remains is approval in the House of Representatives and conciliation.
In the text approved by the Senate there were few changes. “We have fulfilled our duty,” said the president of the corporation, Roy Barreras, at the end of the debate in plenary, while stating that “the road map for Colombia in the next four years” was approved.
Barreras, one of the politicians closest to the National governmentstated that the project: “Brings the most important vocational lines that imply the path towards social justice, closing the gaps of inequality and with the necessary modifications in the democratic debate given within the Legislature! The change is the reforms and the solutions They are the practical and real implementation of the reforms in the territories!”
However, the project presented by the National government suffered the elimination of various articles, such as the creation of the National Forest Service and the National Agency for Ecological and Biodiversity Restoration. Nor was the Agency for Digital Security and Special Affairs.
One of the decisions most celebrated by the opposition of the national government was the withdrawal of the article that sought the land titling or the supposed “express expropriation”. “We wanted to do more expeditious titling so that the agrarian reform is faster, but if we have to do it in twice the time it will be done,” said the Minister of Agriculture, Jhenifer Mojica.
