“I'll become unforgettable, right? Many men want to be,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro said before cameras this week, in a statement that made clear his deep desire to leave his mark on the country's history. He expressed this at the beginning of the week, on Monday, in front of journalist Daniel Coronell, and at the very beginning of one of his worst diplomatic crises. Only hours earlier, US President Donald Trump had called him a “drug trafficking leader.” Petro seemed unconcerned. “Are you more worried about your image?” the veteran Colombian journalist asked, in response to the head of state's defiant attitude. “Because of my heritage,” the leftist politician responded.

With nine months left until he leaves office, on August 7, 2026, his time is running out to make history. Amidst the storm, the president has doubled down and is proposing a path to remain relevant even after his departure from the Presidency. That path has a name: a Constituent Assembly.

The president doesn't seem dejected, despite the terrible week for him, his family, his government, and the Colombian left. On the one hand, the U.S. Treasury Department has included him on the OFAC or Clinton list, along with his wife, his eldest son, and his Interior Minister, Armando Benedetti, alleging they have ties to drug trafficking. Washington has also frozen all aid to Colombia, calling into question a decades-long close military alliance.

In the legislative arena, his major reforms are faltering: the Constitutional Court is discussing a proposal to overturn the pension reform, and the Council of State has halted his healthcare reform by decree. On the partisan side, his main political enemy, conservative former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, is returning to the electoral arena after being acquitted of all charges in a high-profile criminal case for witness tampering by an appeals court. At the same time, his political movement is choosing its presidential candidate this Sunday in an open consultation, without yet knowing whether it will run in the 2026 elections as a party or a coalition of forces.

Combat tone

In times of crisis, Petro usually strikes a combative tone, and this week he returned to the microphone. He spoke again on social media about a Constituent Assembly. His government presented a text for convening it and hopes citizens will debate it. He also called a crowd to downtown Bogotá to show that the initiative can have popular support."Constituent power will not be for me, it will be for you," he promised on Friday in Bolívar Square, where he arrived wearing a red T-shirt with the phrase"The people are sovereign," taken from the national anthem.

While maintaining tension by criticizing his opposition by associating it with the mafia, he maintained caution on the international front. He was careful not to criticize Trump and even promised not to speak about him while he is president, a way to avoid a further diplomatic escalation.

With the Constituent Assembly, on the other hand, he put the focus on local issues. This is no minor announcement for Colombians, the majority of whom have already said they would not support a reform to the 1991 Constitution. In 2018, when he was seeking to win votes for the presidential runoff, Petro signed a letter stating that he would never convene a Constituent Assembly, fearing it would seek to eliminate the prohibition on reelection, which is prohibited in Colombia. The left has traditionally criticized the possibility of staying in power, and Petro now asserts that his proposal"is not about writing pro-posts," referring to the change Uribe Vélez achieved in 2006 to win reelection and which was later eliminated under Juan Manuel Santos. He has said that it is, rather, about"deepening" the existing Constitution to implement the reforms that are shaky.

Petro knows he doesn't have time. The road to reforming the Constitution in a Constituent Assembly is long. First, Congress must approve a bill calling for it, then the Constitutional Court must endorse it, and then at least 13 million people must participate in a vote—Petro was elected in 2022 with 11 million votes in the second round, in which the majority must approve the proposal. Then, another vote would have to be held to elect the delegates. All of this would take two or three years.

In the plan Petro announced, this process would be a way to keep the grassroots mobilized."We want a social committee to be established now, not by politicians, not by the government, but by social forces of the citizenry, to draft the bill that will be presented to Congress on July 20," he stated at the Plaza de Bolívar."What we want is for the popular mandate to tell this new president, male or female, and the new Congress, that the people's decision is to go to the polls to elect their constituents who will dedicate themselves exclusively to approving the people's reforms." He then clarified this Friday that, as an ordinary citizen, he would like to be one of those elected.

The path for Petro to go from being president to a member of an unlikely constituent assembly is as long as it is short for this proposal to attract attention during the upcoming election campaign. The president has said he hopes to collect 10 million signatures in support of the initiative, in a campaign parallel to that of the legislative and presidential candidates.

Without knowing if he'll get that support, the president knows how to command attention. Two weeks ago, the Council of State placed limits on his long and repetitive speeches, and since then, he has increased his media exposure. Last week, he gave his address to RTVC, the state media system run by his friend Hollman Morris, and there he declared himself a victim of censorship. Four days later, Coronell's address centered around Trump. Three days after that, he called on the international media to talk about Trump, again taking care not to criticize him directly. The following day, he held a mobilization in Bolívar Square. The entire time, he maintained a frenetic pace on his X account. The candidates, right or left, cannot be heard amid the crises and Petro's microphones. No one resonates as much as the president, especially when he breaks his promise and seeks a constituent assembly.