2023-04-26 18:24:00
(CNN Spanish) — The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, requested the formal resignation of all his ministers on Tuesday night, a source from the Casa de Nariño confirmed to CNN. The president will thus be able to reorganize his cabinet following 9 months in power.
This is not the first ministerial crisis that Petro has faced. On February 27, the president announced the departure of three of his ministers: Alejandro Gaviria of Education, María Isabel Urrutia of Sports and Patricia Ariza of Culture. For various analysts, and even for former Minister Gaviria, this political tremor originated in disagreements with the health reform that is currently in Congress.
The controversy over health reform
“I resign for health reasons,” the former Minister of Education ironically put on his Twitter account. “I was Minister of Health for a long time, for six years. I entered Gustavo Petro’s Cabinet coming from a different political force, more associated with the political center. With an idea that one can reach partial agreements between different parties,” Gaviria said. in an interview with CNN on March 24. “When the legislative agenda is presented at the beginning of the year, the health reform is presented. I was quite explicit in the Cabinet meetings. I said that I did not agree. I maintain those concerns with the health reforms,” added the former official, who believes that the Petro reform might lead to the bankruptcy of the health system in Colombia.
This position was shared at that time by other ministers, such as the current head of the Treasury, José Antonio Ocampo, and the Minister of Agriculture, Cecilia López, in a letter that was published days before the departure of Gaviria, Urrutia and Ariza.
On his Twitter account, Petro stated this Tuesday that “the political coalition agreed upon as a majority has ended today by decision of some party presidents. Some of whom threaten the majority of their own bench.” This following the tight vote in the initial presentation of the health reform in the seventh commission of the House of Representatives, which had 10 votes in favor and 8 once morest.
“The invitation to a social pact for change has been rejected. Those who have enriched themselves with the use of public money have not realized that society demands their rights and that this implies dialogue and pact. Such a situation leads us to a rethinking of the Government,” the president wrote.
Petro has not hidden his annoyance over the difficulties that the process of reforming the health system led by Minister Carolina Corcho has had. Several heads of the traditional political parties, such as César Gaviria del Liberal and Dilian Francisca Toro of the National Unity party, who were part of the government coalition that made it possible to approve the tax reform in 2022, have questioned whether the initiative removes the health management to the private company and become state management in a large percentage. This, in the opinion of some political and opinion sectors, led Petro to break with his allies in the legislature.
View of the presidential palace of Nariño in Bogotá on March 8, 2022. (Credit: Raúl Arboleda/AF/ Getty Images)
“It worries me, above all. Any government in any society needs to have and transmit stability to the citizens to offer tranquility in the government processes. That stability is built on two columns: governability and favourability. If a government weakens either of these two, it is a mandate that fails to promote the reforms it wants to promote,” Roy Barreras, president of the Senate and who was in the political campaign that led Petro to the presidency, told Caracol Radio.
“The current system has achieved that the rich and the poor receive the same attention in the best private clinics. With state control, the mistreatment of the population and the privilege of the political bureaucracy lead to,” said former president Álvaro Uribe. on his Twitter account. Until now, the ex-president has maintained direct communication with Petro, and has publicly said on several occasions that he is making constructive opposition from his Democratic Center party.
Questions regarding the energy transition
But there are not only differences within the Government regarding the health reform. There are also questions regarding the so-called energy transition. “The rich countries had the green revolution, they used what they are forbidding us to use and with that they achieved the productivity that has driven us out of the market, and we are so naive that we repeat that like parrots. Do you understand the subtle message?”, said Agriculture Minister Cecilia López on April 19, at the 2023 economic perspectives forum organized by the newspaper El Colombiano. “They’re going to kick me out. I’m happy,” the official said jokingly following expressing her position regarding the Petro government’s policy of not continuing with oil exploration and starting to depend on clean energy.
“We have to move from greed for fossils to an economy that does not use coal or oil,” the Colombian president told reporters following his meeting with US President Joe Biden at the White House on April 20. That has been his position since the beginning of the government, on August 7, 2022.
In addition to the health reform, the reform of the pension system, the labor reform, the justice reform and an initiative to submit to justice are currently pending for study in Congress, which would grant benefits of reduced sentences to drug traffickers who decide to adhere to this rule and provide information on their illegal activities and illegally obtained assets.
With this break in the government coalition, President Petro will find it very difficult to achieve the majorities that will allow him to carry out these initiatives. The formation of the new ministerial cabinet will give clues as to what is the roadmap that the president wants from now on to be able to balance the political pulse in the legislature.
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