According to statements by Labor Minister Antonio Sanguino, the content of the regulations will be made public once they pass review by the Legal Secretariat of the Presidency. The official stated that, with the shelving of the bill, the only remaining opportunity to vindicate workers’ rights is through the referendum announced by President Gustavo Petro.

Sanguino also condemned the actions of the eight senators, who signed a motion to block the initiative’s progress in Congress, and described the arguments they presented against the bill as fallacious. He also stated that the legislators’ intention was to defeat the reform, given that they had not changed a single one of their positions and refused to engage in any form of negotiation.

While the future of the bill was being debated in the Seventh Commission, thousands of people mobilized in Colombia’s main cities in support of the government.

In Bogotá, President Petro showed up at Plaza Bolívar in the capital, called on citizens to join the referendum on social reforms, and declared that from that point on, the mobilization across the country would be permanent and growing.

The president commented that the national government will not betray its citizens in the way that legislators “bowing to money” do. “We will resist because we know that our mission is to show the paths to popular victory, as we have already done, as we have demonstrated, that we can win time and time again, and the time to win has come again,” he said in his speech.

Petro emphasized that the proposal for a referendum is fundamental because it revives the 1991 Constitution. “You are invited, the referendum begins, and the mobilization is ongoing and growing,” he asserted.

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