Petro reaches mid-term supported by popular sectors but without room for criticism

Bogota, Aug 4 (EFE).- Gustavo Petro, the first left-wing Colombian president, has broken all the molds in terms of the way of governingwith a large participation of the popular sectors and a personal style that leaves little room for criticism in his first two years of government.

«You don’t govern from a distance, far from the people and disconnected from their realities. On the contrary, you govern by listening», Petro said in his inauguration speech on August 7, 2022, and since then he has opened the doors of the Casa de Nariño, the seat of the Executive, to peasants, Afro-Colombians, indigenous people and trade unionists whom he considers the basis of the “primary constituent.”

With the popular sectors, a handful of experts in different areas and some faithful and unconditional friends who have accompanied him since his time in the M-19 guerrilla or in his political career, Petro began what he called “the Government of change.”

“What the government has done in these two years is a serious approach to the country (…) This approach has had positive effects in the economic field, in the social field, in the progress of some aspects of the peace process,” Senator Iván Cepeda, who is part of the leftist coalition Pacto Histórico, which brought Petro to the Presidency, told EFE.

According to Cepeda, Petro “has significantly lowered the unemployment rate, has managed to keep the dollar at a stable price (…) and has shown the country that it is possible to move from an economy that was excessively focused on ‘commodities’ to an economy that has made progress such as the reactivation of the agricultural sector.”

“We could also talk about social achievements,” he says, recalling that on July 20, Petro told Congress “that, according to official figures, 650,000 people had been lifted out of poverty last year. This is a fact that makes one think about the effectiveness of the government, which is said to have been ineffective.”

File photo showing supporters of the Government of Colombian President Gustavo Petro holding a sign at a rally in support of his reforms on July 20, 2023 in Bogotá (Colombia). EFE/ Carlos Ortega

Between the center and friends

However, the president’s tendency to ignore opinions that go against his political ideology surfaced before the first year of government, from which, one by one, the more technical and centrist voices left to make way for more radical ones.

Internal differences forced the Cabinet to remove its first ministers of Education, Alejandro Gaviria; Agriculture, Cecilia López; Finance, José Antonio Ocampo; and the director of the National Planning Department, Jorge Iván González, considered the most sensible voice in the Government, in a matter of months.

In parallel, the power of Laura Sarabia has grown. She is a young lawyer who, beyond her position as director of the Administrative Department of the Presidency of the Republic (Dapre), is the president’s right-hand woman and, in practice, the most powerful woman in the country, who controls access to the president.

“Gustavo Petro tries to surround himself with people who are very loyal to him and his project because in the end there are not many prepared left-wing officials that he can count on, so he has the tendency to form a small circle of people, regardless of whether they do not have the necessary experience, and that has affected the way he governs,” political analyst Yann Basset, professor at the Faculty of International Studies at the University of Rosario, explained to EFE.

Other characteristics of the president that create friction are his chronic unpunctuality and his tendency to respond in X to any criticism of his management, “a form of communication that generates a lot of tension with his opponents,” according to Basset.

The problem of corruption

Half of the government has also been marked by corruption allegations and, although there have been no convictions in any of the cases so far, “the fact that it has small circles of great trust and that Petro tends to defend them to the last consequences when they are involved in scandals, affects the image that public opinion has of the government,” adds the expert.

However, Basset points out: “Corruption must be viewed in a more structural way” and gives as an example the scandal of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD), allegedly used to pay bribes to congressmen.

“The possible purchase of support from congressmen has a lot to do with the way Congress works, with the fact that the Government has not wanted to negotiate its projects with other parties, it has broken the coalition it had at the beginning to try to seek majorities project by project and this evidently lends itself to these corrupt practices,” concludes Basset.

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