“We had to sell our souls to various devils”, were the premonitory words of the senator of the Historical Pact, Gustavo Bolívar, at the beginning of August, in an interview with WEEKwhen the government of Gustavo Petro was just beginning.
At that time, President Gustavo Petro, in his spirit of reaching agreements and moving forward with his legislative agenda, gave him his blessing. in the presidency of Congress to Roy Barreras, the controversial protagonist of the ‘petrovideos’ and the bishop of all governments in recent years.
In addition, since he settled in the Casa de Nariño, Petro had no problem embracing the Liberal Party, La U and the Conservatives, and put together a coalition with them whose fuel is more bureaucracy than ideology. The head of state gave them their own ministries and strategic entities, such as the National Savings Fund and the Agrarian Bank, the Fiduprevisora, the Positiva Insurance company, among others.
“Once I said it was a toad soup, but we are going to eat them,” Bolívar said in that interview with this magazine.
Two of the biggest ‘toads’ that Petrism had to go through occurred just this week, with two events that, in previous governments, they criticized furiously, but with which they now had to keep silent.
The first of them has to do with an issue that has come out from the stands to criticize the Historical Pact: the same day that President Gustavo Petro signed the decree to increase the salary of congressmen, the First Commission of the Chamber sank the only project that survived to lower the salary.
It was a two-way move that kept the privileges of parliamentarians intact, but it was very costly for the Petrista bench, which came to Congress with the main promise of lowering the salaries of congressmen.
What came next was the execution of a script that Colombians already know by heart: the congressmen came out to lament and threw the ball. The senators said that it was the fault of the Chamber that “shelved the bill.” The president of the Chamber, David Racero, blamed the First Commission of this corporation, and the members of this commission said that it was the Government that blocked their agenda.
But what is clear is that from the Historical Pact, where before they criticized the president every time he signed the increase for congressmen, despite the fact that this is a constitutional obligation, this time they had to remain silent or go out to ask the public to apply pressure, but there were no attacks on the head of state, as was the case before.
The other matter in which Petrism was forced not to pronounce itself occurred following the controversial decision of the Petro Government to appoint Juan Manuel Corzo as ambassador to Paraguay. The former conservative senator was the same one who in 2010 said that his salary as a congressman was not enough to pay for the gasoline for two trucks.
This appointment generated criticism especially once morest the president of the Chamber, David Racero. On April 3, 2019, during the government of Iván Duque, Racero questioned whether Corzo had been appointed as Colombian ambassador to Cuba.
“Juan Manuel Corzo, former congressman and former Senate candidate for @PartidoConservC ―burned in the 2018 elections― was nominated as Colombian ambassador to Cuba. His only experience in the area of diplomacy: being a screwed congressman,” Racero said, at the time, in a thread on Twitter in which he questioned diplomatic appointments.
However, now that the appointment was made by the Petro government, Racero has remained silent. On social networks, different people have questioned his possible lack of consistency.
Another of the events in which the Petrista bench had to be in an uncomfortable position occurred around Verónica Alcocer, first lady of Colombia. The wife of President Gustavo Petro, at the beginning of October, was appointed ambassador on special mission to attend three unique events: the funerals of Elizabeth II and Shinzo Abe, assassinated former Japanese prime minister, and the United Nations General Assembly.
The total travel expenses were approximately 63 million pesos. The government bench is silent, while, for four years, they did not stop criticizing the trips of former president Iván Duque and his companions.
It is clear that the exercise of being a government is much more complex than being in the opposition. And the Historical Pact has had to learn it by force. What they criticized before, now keep silent.
