Colombia: Gustavo Petro and the ‘superpowers’ that the National Development Plan gives him

Although the final version of the Colombian National Development Plan 2022-2026 (PND) submitted by the National Government to the Congress eliminated the extraordinary powers given to President Gustavo Petro to modify the Superintendencies of Industry and Commerce and Corporations and the possibility of liquidating electricity companies, other ‘superpowers’ were added and maintained.

The 166-page document establishes 14 extraordinary powers for the head of state.

This means that once the PND is law, Gustavo Petro has six months to regulate the alternative uses of the coca plant, cannabis, and the medicinal, therapeutic, and scientific uses of psychoactive substances.

Also, to acquire freely or onerously the infrastructure corresponding to the Hospital San Juan de Dios-Instituto Materno Infantil and create a public entity of the executive branch to use such infrastructure to provide health services and research.

Likewise, Petro would have the power:

• to create, split, merge, merge, suppress, integrate, or modify the legal nature of entities of the executive branch;
• to modify and determine the objectives and organizational structure of the entities resulting from such creations, mergers, or splits and of those entities to which the functions of the same are transferred.

And in this line to determine their assignment or linkage.

In addition:

• to modify the objectives, functions, organic structure, and legal regime of the executive branch entities;
• to make the necessary budgetary modifications to finance the operating and investment expenses necessary to fulfill the functions assigned to the created entities.

Similarly, the PND, whose articles will be debated by the legislature, would allow President Petro:

• to capitalize on the companies created, merged, or split;
• to create, suppress or modify the legal nature of funds with or without legal personality or autonomous patrimonies.

To which it adds two more extraordinary powers:

• The first is “to purge and modify the current regulations to establish the instruments required to implement the policies of reindustrialization and strengthening of the popular economy, including the definition of non-tax incentives, mechanisms to promote alliances to attract sustainable foreign direct investment and technology transfer, assignment and management of assets and financing schemes for the strengthening of production”.
• And the second is to create a system of transfers or subsidies in cash or kind to support the population in situations of poverty and vulnerability, derived from adverse situations caused by the materialization of social risks, economic risks, or natural disasters, as well as to modify the programs Families and Youth in Action and integrate them to the transfer system created in the development of these powers.

With information from Bloomberg