After receiving 49 votes against and 47 in favor, the call requested by President Gustavo Petro was shelved on Wednesday following a voting process that government representatives and the president himself described as fraudulent.

In a nationally broadcast address, the president considered it a gruesome act for having prevented Senator Martha Peralta from casting her vote; he also denounced that the vote was not properly called and that the Senate president shut down the process when he saw an advantage for his party.

Petro believed that in light of what has happened, it is time to respond, but to do so with the wisdom of a determined people who have already demonstrated their majority both in public squares and in polls. “What was being discussed was whether people have the right to an eight-hour workday, whether young workers have the right to a salary, whether farmers have the right to a pension,” he explained.

The President called for organizations to meet nationwide to discuss whether or not to approve the initiatives proposed by the popular movement. “The people’s time has come. The response to corruption and fraud within the Senate will be calm and joyful, but it must be profoundly forceful; we cannot wait until next year,” Petro stated, referring to the electoral calendar. He also called on the Senate to put the referendum to a vote again.

A few hours earlier, several union organizations expressed their rejection of the collapse of the referendum.

The president of the United Workers’ Central Union, Fabio Arias, described the incident as a maneuver by an “oligarchic senate that doesn’t want workers to recover the rights that neoliberal and pro-business governments took away from us.” He noted that the union is on alert to protest the fraud concocted in the Senate to stifle and frustrate the hopes of workers and the general population to participate in a referendum that would translate into benefits for the working class.

The General Confederation of Labor and the Colombian Federation of Education Workers also did the same.

The referendum rejected in the Senate proposed that citizens vote on vital labor issues such as the establishment of an eight-hour workday and a pay increase for those who work on rest days or holidays, among other issues.

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