Colombia’s senate sinks labor referendum in what government calls fraudulent vote – Colombia News

Colombia’s government suffered a major defeat in Congress after a tiny Senate minority rejected a referendum that would have forced Congress to improve labor conditions.

With 49 votes against and 47 in favor, the Senate ended President Gustavo Petro’s attempt to push through his far-reaching and broadly supported labor reform through a popular vote.

Opponents of the labor reform were ale to secure the victory after a vote that revived the labor reform bill that had been sunk by a Senate commission earlier this year.

Supporters of the labor reform said that the revived bill was a trap, claiming that Congress would lack the time to debate and approve the labor reform before its deadline on July 20.

Interior Minister Armando Benedetti, who was in charge of pushing the referendum through the Senate, accused Senate President Efrain Cepeda of the Conservative Party of using fraud to secure the government’s latest defeat in Congress.

Today was fraudulent. The referendum was fraudulently sunk. The president of the Senate did not give the guarantees to vote, he closed the registry when he saw that they were winning. Today they cheated.

Interior minister Armando Benedetti

Cepeda ordered the secretary of the Senate to call the vote and immediately suspended the session while lawmakers were still scrambling around them to secure their vote had been registered.

Early in the morning, Benedetti said that the government had the support it needed in the Senate to ratify the referendum.

Ahead of the session, however, the Senate president inserted a debate and a vote to revive the sunk labor reform bill in an apparent attempt to diminish support for the popular vote.

Ninety percent of participants in an online poll of conservative television network RCN said that they were in favor of the popular vote.