On Monday, President Uribe announced a change in his initial position according to which the Water Referendum should be destroyed since it threatened the interests of the country. Thus, after meeting with government officials, he announced it was necessary to carry on with the Water Referendum bill and also with a bill on life sentence to rapists. He also stated that these were democratic practices that should be respected.

As it was expected, on Wednesday 22nd, during the debate on the Water Referendum in the House of Representatives, MP Roy Barreras, from the Cambio Radical party, put forward a proposal to amend the bill, ordered by the executive branch, which included a new heading: Referendum to Protect Water. This amendment basically meant that water is no longer considered a fundamental right, water is no longer recognized as a common and public good; it also meant the elimination of the priority use of essential ecosystems for the water cycle with this end; and it eliminated the ban on the privatization of water management and sanitation services.

The amendment also added that “the water sources that begin and end in the same field” are private, thus imposing an exception to the principle that all waters are of public use, Therefore, water will be handed over to the new private and illegitimate owners of large plots of land, which led to the eviction of over four million peasants. Contrary to this, they eliminated from the bill the fact that waters that are located on traditional territories are part of them. They modified the proposal of the universal free minimum vital, in order to falsely say the are aimed at poor people exclusively, but within the current legal framework of private supply of public services.

The Referendum spokesperson and representatives of the Liberal and the Polo Democratico Alternativo parties didn´t take long to report that the new text does not have the support of the people, because the amendments do not reflect what the Colombian citizens signed, and demand that the original text be respected to consider water as a human right. However, the majority of Uribe´s MP won in the vote and decided to continue with the referendum but with the modifications mentioned.

It also needs to be stated that, at the same time, a Referendum is being proposed to reelect President Alvaro Uribe for the third time, which would also require an amendment to the Constitution. Uribe´s move with the Water Referendum consists in a simulation of democracy which entails the intention to attract voters to the three referenda at the same time, securing a massive turnout in the polls in order to pass the immediate presidential reelection.