In a heated speech delivered by President Gustavo Petro in Plaza de Bolívar, he revealed details of his controversial proposal to convene a National Constituent Assembly. In addition, the Colombian president, in a lengthy speech, stated that starting this Friday, October 24, social committees will begin to organize to collect citizen signatures to strengthen the Constituent Assembly. His intention is to collect more than two million signatures.
“The vampires of death once again take over the budget; once again the budget goes into the hands of a few privileged people; once again the State moves its rifles against the working people and the youth. Oh, here we say enough is enough. The proper response of a people is no longer to beg, we beg too much. The response of a people is its own power, the power to decide in a State and in a sovereign nation,” the head of state noted. Nariño Palace | Photo: Guillermo Torres / Semana
He also said on the platform: "If the king is not sovereign, neither the king of Spain nor the king of today, who wants to make Colombia a colony again, then the people are sovereign. And how do you exercise the sovereignty of the people? How do you exercise popular sovereignty, not a monarchy, not a sovereignty of tyrants, and not an sovereignty of oligarchs, if not by exercising constituent power?"
President Gustavo Petro announced that on July 20, 2026, he will submit to Congress the bill to convene a National Constituent Assembly. — Revista Semana (@RevistaSemana) October 25, 2025
“I know we’re approaching a Congressional election. On Sunday, before I leave to open markets other than those in the United States to the people of Colombia, I myself will vote in the Historic Pact referendum because I’m a member of the Historic Pact. I’ll decide who to vote for; I can’t count it out because I’m getting involved in electoral politics. But I will exercise my right as a member and as a citizen and go to the polls in that referendum where candidates for Congress and the Presidency are chosen,” he emphasized.
Likewise, he said that the project to convene a National Constituent Assembly will not be with the current congressmen, but with those elected in the next elections in 2026.
“It is the new Congress elected by the people of Colombia that will have in its hands on July 20 of next year the signatures and the bill made by the people, mind you, not by any minister, because we do not substitute the popular will but rather the constituent power, the power of the minister or the president. And this is about the power of the people,” Petro insisted.
And he asserted: "The point is that the president is publicly calling on the people to look at their own power, to nurture it, and to use it, because there are no other paths, because the oligarchy has already closed all of them so that democratic reforms could not be achieved. He will not surrender to the current Congress, he will surrender to the new one elected by the people. We will see that Congress is elected by the people. Their campaigns will be divided between those who support the people becoming a constituent assembly again and those who oppose it."
"The population will decide, but not only will those who will make the decision in the Colombian Congress decide, but they will also decide what the bill includes. I say, we don't need to change the entire 1991 Constitution, so we don't need six months or a year of constituent assembly. What we need is to restore what the oligarchy took from the 1991 Constitution: to restore education spending," he said.
