The government of President Gustavo Petro in Colombia will try to pass up to nine bills in the final stretch of the legislative session, marked by a rising moment of tension between the government and a Congress increasingly focused on the pre-election campaign for the legislative elections next March 8.
In the final weeks of 2025 and the first of 2026, the Colombian presidency sought to push a package of bills that, if approved, would bring about significant changes to the country’s social, economic, and territorial model. However, the political context — with fragmented majorities, an active opposition, and lawmakers attentive to their own electoral aspirations — has called into question the viability of these initiatives.
The struggle to keep Petro’s reform agenda alive illustrates the difficulty of advancing far-reaching proposals in a legislature focused on electoral strategy rather than programmatic deliberation. The president has stressed the importance of these initiatives as part of his legacy and his administration’s promises, but he faces a scenario in which some of his most ambitious reforms have been shelved or stalled in committees and commissions.
The health reform, for example, which seeks to reorganize the public system and its financing, has repeatedly seen its progress cut short in the Senate, reflecting resistance from conservative sectors and the balance of legislative forces itself.
This context not only complicates the approval of new laws but also the survival of proposals initiated in previous periods, forcing the executive to maneuver urgently before the parliamentary deadline for approving them expires.
The truth is that this scenario seems very unlikely, at least on issues most closely tied to the government’s principles, such as health sector reform, especially when a little more than 70% of sitting lawmakers are focused on reelection.
Nine bills the government seeks to pass in Colombia’s election-season Congress
One of the most emblematic projects for the government has been the transformation of Colombia’s health system. Conceived as a structural reform that would shift functions and resources toward a more centralized public administration, this initiative has faced not only technical objections but explicit rejection in key congressional bodies.
The lack of consensus on how to finance and articulate the new model has generated a blockade that illustrates the distance between the executive and the broad legislative sectors.
The health care model has been in crisis for two decades, but the impossibility of political consensus throughout that time has left the system on the brink.
During the presidency of Juan Manuel Santos (2010–2018), it was acknowledged that “the EPS system — the private companies that mediate the system — has failed.” Nevertheless, no action to improve the service was introduced, while several of these EPS have gone bankrupt and abandoned their leading role in a sector as sensitive as health care.
President Petro’s government promised in 2022 to move toward a system in which the state — which under the Constitution is the main financier of health care — would play a much more important role, changing the role of the EPS, something that put these companies and the conservative politicians who are the main supporters of a mixed model created in 1993 on alert.
However, the Colombian Congress has rejected the government’s model, and it does not seem feasible that it would be precisely now, just two months before the elections, that parliamentary approval would be granted for what would represent the main victory of a president — Gustavo Petro — who has only managed to pass the labor reform from his slate of social proposals.
Agrarian jurisdiction, fracking ban, energy tariff regulation, and Indigenous issues
The agrarian jurisdiction, a normative approach that seeks to regulate competencies over rural land and facilitate the implementation of agrarian reform, is another of the initiatives the government hopes to save. Its debate, barely begun, faces the obstacle of the legislative calendar: A few months to conclude debates and reports, while lawmakers are already prioritizing lists and alliances for March.
A different but equally controversial approach is the ban on fracking, a bill that seeks to prohibit hydraulic fracturing for hydrocarbon extraction in Colombia. This proposal has sparked heated debates between environmental advocates and sectors linked to the energy industry, but it has also suffered delays in technical committees, where its legal and economic viability is weighed.
Another open front is the regulation of energy tariffs. Conceived to try to contain rising public utility costs, this bill has had an uncertain path in the Fifth Committee of the House, where the interests of major operators and market logic clash with the state intervention proposals promoted by the executive branch.
In a context of possible inflationary growth, following the nearly 23% increase in the minimum wage, this proposal becomes more urgent to avoid market logic that warns of an imminent rise in sector prices.
Indigenous jurisdiction, which seeks to recognize and regulate the exercise of authority by Indigenous peoples within their territories, has become a difficult area for negotiation. Although part of the initiative stems from constitutional commitments and dialogues with communities, its discussion has become entangled with broader debates over territorial autonomy and collective rights, issues that generate resistance among sectors of Congress concerned about legislative coherence and equity among communities.
Submission law, fentanyl criminalization, peace seats, and competency law
The government also promoted the submission law, aimed at offering benefits to members of criminal structures who submit to judicial processes. This initiative has been particularly controversial due to its implications for security and justice policy, and it has had to navigate not only constitutional doubts but also a political environment that views any sign of flexibility toward criminal organizations with suspicion.
In a more specific area, the criminalization of fentanyl, a synthetic drug whose presence worries both authorities and communities, seeks to establish clear sanctions for its production and trafficking. Despite the urgent discussion around security and public health, its legislative progress has been diluted amid electoral priorities and a lack of alignment among parties.
Finally, two initiatives aimed at consolidating peace agreements and organizing the functioning of the state are among the executive’s bets: The regulation of peace seats, intended to guarantee representation in areas affected by the armed conflict, and the competencies law, which seeks to clarify attributions among territorial and sectoral levels of the state.
Both projects, though technically and politically relevant, may fail to reach the necessary quorum before Congress closes its period for processing new laws.
Parliamentary arithmetic and the electoral environment have placed these eight initiatives, plus the health reform, on a path with little room to advance: Their approval before the legislative elections appears increasingly difficult, and if any do succeed, it will be thanks to intense negotiations and concessions that could dilute their original ambition.
For Gustavo Petro’s government, this challenge is not only legislative but also political, as it would mean consolidating a legacy amid a Congress that looks more toward the ballot box than toward building lasting consensus.