Perhaps it seems prehistoric, but a year ago optimism in Colombia about the presidency of Gustavo Petro was around 56%. Almost twelve months later, pessimism is around 59%. The honeymoon that all governments enjoy in their first year continued in the first semester: the president managed to approve a progressive tax reform, restore diplomatic relations with Venezuela, and sit down to talk cordially (and make alliances) with former political enemies. The change project was traveling on a clear highway. But the path became a bogged down trail during the second semester: the ceasefires of total peace did not start, the government coalition broke up in the face of the health reform, and statements by former allies and the president’s son led to a deep wound to the government. The conciliatory Petro who called for political unity has become a more confrontational one who calls for demonstrations to defend his reforms before politicians, and who often fights with the prosecutor (a clear opponent) or the media (when an unfavorable angle bothers him ). This Monday Petro faces his first anniversary and a key week for his future with the challenge of recovering political momentum after a year in government while the scandal of his son and internal conflicts weigh down the administration of the president of Colombia. So it was, in five photos, the rise of optimism and the free fall towards pessimism.
The calm brought by an economist named José Antonio Ocampo
José Antonio Ocampo, in Bogotá, on November 23, 2022.Diego Cuevas
After being elected, those nervous about being governed by the left begged the president to take care of the economy and think through his decisions to calm the markets. Petro listened to the anxiety, and the prime minister he announced was Finance Minister José Antonio Ocampo, an internationally respected Social Democratic economist. “He is a serious person, a person who inspires confidence,” said then the president of the National Association of Businessmen, the largest business union. Ocampo presented a tax reform on the first day of the Government, on August 8, which the ruling coalition in Congress approved in just three months—an unprecedented record. It was a progressive reform that increased tax collection for the richest, especially the oil sector, and complied with filling the state coffers to finance social reforms. Ocampo also remained calm in the face of inflation and the rise in the dollar, and even before those who got nervous when the Minister of Mines, Irene Vélez, spoke of stopping new exploration contracts. The ‘responsible adult’ of finances, they called him. “I managed to lower interest rates on public debt in pesos by almost four percentage points,” he told EL PAÍS when he left the cabinet in May. His successor, Ricardo Bonilla, has taken care of that calm that Ocampo planted.
A new relationship with Venezuela and the United States
Gustavo Petro and Nicolás Maduro shake hands after the signing of the joint declaration between both leaders, at the Miraflores Palace, in Caracas, on November 1, 2022. Miguel Gutiérrez (efe)
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Another twist that Petro brought in its early days was the restoration of relations with the Venezuela of Nicolás Maduro—two governments that had cut off bilateral meetings for six years. Since then, Petro and Maduro have met several times and have agreed, for example, that Colombian investigation teams can search for the remains of people disappeared by paramilitaries in Venezuela, and that the Maduro government accompany the peace process with the guerrillas of ELN—an armed group that operates, in part, on Venezuelan territory. The two countries benefited economically when they reopened trade on the long border they share. And, for those who feared that the president’s ideology and his relationship with Venezuela could interfere with Colombia’s harmony towards its greatest ally, the United States, Petro has been a faithful intermediary between his North American friend and Maduro—especially to pressure the latter that he go to fair elections in 2024. Petro also met with President Joe Biden in April, when he reiterated again that he considers it urgent to change the approach to the war on drugs. Although Biden is not going to reverse this policy for now, the issue was not a matter of dispute, and the leaders agreed to cooperate in the protection of the environment and, in particular, the Amazon. “I hope that we can deepen mutual cooperation,” Biden said after the meeting. A short time later, one of the great achievements that the presidency was able to present was a considerable drop in deforestation: 29% fewer hectares destroyed in 2022 than in 2021.
The reform to the health of the discord
Vice President Francia Márquez, former Minister of Health Carolina Corcho and Gustavo Petro at the filing of the health reform project, in Bogotá, on February 13, 2023. Fernando Vergara (AP)
The illusion of unity that Petrism generated began to break in February, when the president presented his health reform and several of his ministers protested. It was anticipated that the proposal would generate deep divisions in the cabinet, where two visions were at odds: that of the Minister of Health, Carolina Corcho, who defended the elimination of the EPS (Health Provider Companies) to be replaced by public insurance; and that of the former Minister of Health, Alejandro Gaviria, who was in the Education portfolio, but opposed the elimination of the EPS due to the inefficiency it could generate. Little by little the initiative was breaking the coalition in Congress: conservatives, liberals, members of the U party rebelled, and the consented initiative of the president only managed to overcome a debate of four that he faces. Petro first asked Gaviria to resign, due to his opposition to the reform, and two months later to Corcho, due to the resistance he generated. José Antonio Ocampo and Cecilia López also left, in part, due to their criticism of that reform. In total, Petro removed 11 of the initial 18 ministers from him, unusual for a president in his first year, and a symbol of instability. The president ultimately asked citizens, not congressmen, to save his social reforms: he called for marches in May and June, when the partisan unity boat was already sinking. “We request that the reforms that Colombia approved at the polls be approved,” he yelled at Congress in May, surrounded by a crowd near the Plaza de Bolívar. None of the three social reforms—health, labor, or pension—has been approved.
The strongest blows come from those closest to us: from Benedetti to Nicolás
Daysuris Vásquez and Nicolás Petro during the inauguration ceremony of Gustavo Petro, in the Plaza Bolívar in Bogotá, on August 7, 2023. Carlos Ortega ((EPA) EFE)
If something has been positive for Petro in his first year in office, it is that he has not had a strong opposition leader: he maintains a cordial relationship with former President Álvaro Uribe; an agreement to buy fertile land from ranchers who feared they would be expropriated; and who almost beat him in the presidential elections, businessman Rodolfo Hernández, is being investigated for corruption and has resigned from his chance to be a Senator. The hardest political blows the president has received did not come from his enemies but from those closest to him: the former ambassador to Venezuela, Armando Benedetti, and his eldest son, Nicolás Petro. The two were central in the presidential campaign on the Caribbean coast, and both have indicated, in leaked audios and before the courts, that the campaign coffers received more money than they owed and than they reported. The first was Benedetti when, in the middle of a fight he had with the former chief of staff Laura Sarabia, audios were leaked in which he reminded him that he had obtained 15,000 million pesos for the campaign and added: “at the moment when I say who gave the money here on the coast, I know it’s that mondá, you don’t know a shit about history, read how the son of a bitch started 8,000″. The audios not only indicate a violation of the caps to finance the campaign, but that this money could have come from drug trafficking—process 8,000 was the criminal investigation into the campaign of former president Ernesto Samper for receiving money from the Cali cartel. On the same subject, Nicolás Petro told the Prosecutor’s Office, in August, that money entered the campaign illegally. The first-born decided to speak after his ex-partner, Days Vásquez, accused him of receiving and keeping millions from an ex-narco and other “donors” for the campaign. The first time the president spoke about the issue, in March, he walked away from his son. ‘I didn’t raise him,’ he said. Now the son points to his father and opens the most difficult political scandal facing the Government.
From Operation Hope to Partial Peace
Arrival in Bogotá of the children rescued from the Guaviare jungle, on June 10, 2023.NATHALIA ANGARITA
For the first time, an ex-guerrilla governs Colombia and, as promised in his commitment to end the war, he has tried to give a new approach to the public force that one day he fought. His shiniest moment of glory was when he successfully brokered an alliance between the military and indigenous groups to search, for more than 40 days, for four children lost in the Amazon jungle. A film feat for whose rights the world’s major production companies are now competing. Petro is not the president who came to reinforce the war and that is why he proposed from day one a ‘Total Peace’—willing not to fight, but to sit at a table with the armed groups. Total Peace, however, has not fully started yet. The president hastily announced a ceasefire with several armed groups on January 1, but it did not materialize—the ELN quickly came out to deny it, a political coup that left the impression that the country lives more on the president’s impulses than on his. a serious public security policy. ‘Total Peace’ has not collapsed, but it is advancing at a snail’s pace: apart from the negotiating table with the ELN, with whom a ceasefire was finally formalized, discussions are going slowly with FARC dissidents or urban gangs like the Shottas and the Spartans in Buenaventura. Peace takes time — the government of Juan Manuel Santos’ negotiation with the FARC took almost six years. The total would take even more. In three years left to him, that total tranquility still seems very elusive for the ambitious agenda that the president continues to promise.
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2023-08-07 06:35:36
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