Gustavo Petro assumes, this Sunday, the Presidency of Colombia, for a four-year term. Until now, he has appointed 14 cabinet ministers who will accompany him in his management. Foreign Minister Alvaro Leyva will be a key player in reestablishing relations with Venezuela
Gustavo Petro assumes, this Sunday, the Presidency of Colombia, for a four-year term. So far, he has appointed 14 cabinet ministers who will accompany him in managing him.
The newspaper The country He presented a profile of the officials chosen by Petro, who won the Presidency as a candidate of the Historical Pact.
As Minister of the Interior, Petro appointed the lawyer Alphonse Prada, 57 years old. In 2017, Prada was appointed as Secretary General of the Presidency by Juan Manuel Santos. In addition, he was a councilman of Bogotá for three terms and Private Secretary of Luis Carlos Galán during his presidential campaign for the New Liberalism movement.
The new minister was campaign manager for Petro for the Colombian Presidency.
The foreign minister of the new government is Alvaro Leyva, 79 years old. He is a conservative politician. Since the 1980s, he has focused on promoting different negotiation processes with illegal armed actors.
“His appointment marks both the participation of sectors of the traditional elites in the Petro Government, the importance of the commitment to peace and the commitment to experience,” he highlights The country.
In addition, Leyva will be a key player for reestablish relations with Venezuela and carry out parallel negotiations with the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and with other armed groups.
On the other hand, Petro chose José Antonio Ocampo, 69, as Minister of Finance. He is a renowned social democratic economist, with a career in the public sector and in international entities.
“His appointment marks the arrival of experience and a more moderate view of the first government elected by left-wing parties in Colombia, something that has helped reassure market players who view a change in economic policy in the country with concern,” refers The country.
He was Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations in 2007 and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
In the case of the Ministry of Justice, Petro left the responsibility in the hands of Néstor Osuna Patiño, a lawyer from the Externado University of Colombia, with liberal roots, and an expert in constitutional law. He is credited with a progressive liberal outlook, and in the past he has had the support of the Liberal Party to reach public office in the justice sector.
In addition, Osuna was a magistrate of the Disciplinary Chamber of the Superior Council of the Judiciary, the court in charge of disciplinary investigations of lawyers and judges. He arrived there sworn by President Juan Manuel Santos, who in 2017 included him in another slate, this one for the Constitutional Court.
The Ministry of Defense It will be directed by Iván Velásquez Gómez, 67 years old.
This appointment of Petro has been perceived as a message of fighting corruption and respect for human rights, “but also a political provocation to Uribism, which sees him as a political rival.”
He is a criminal lawyer from the University of Antioquia, who made a career in his department as a prosecutor and solicitor in the 1980s and 1990s, when drug-trafficking, guerrilla and paramilitary violence intensified in the region.
Persecuted by the former Administrative Department of Security (DAS), the political police, in 2012, Velásquez Gómez left the country and became the head of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala.
Likewise, Alejandro Gaviria, 56, is the Minister of Education of the new Colombian government. He is an economist, academic and failed presidential candidate for the center coalition that ran against Gustavo Petro.
Gaviria was deputy director of the National Planning Department, in the government of Álvaro Uribe, researcher at the Fedesarrollo think tank, and professor and dean of the Faculty of Economics at the Universidad de Los Andes.
Women with Petro
Gustavo Petro, who will be accompanied in his administration by Vice President Francia Márquez, included several women in his cabinet.
In this way, Cecilia López Montaño (79 years old) will be the Minister of Agriculture. She is an economist with a long public record as a social democrat in the Liberal Party. She was Deputy Minister of Agriculture and ambassador to The Hague during the government of Belisario Betancur; director of the extinct Institute of Social Security of the liberal César Gaviria; Minister of Agriculture and Environment, and National Director of Planning for former President Ernesto Samper.
Carolina Corcho, 39, is the Minister of Health of the new Colombian government. She is a psychiatrist and political scientist, her appointment is one of the bets on youth and the change of both political vision and power actors.
Corcho is a harsh critic of the health system, he proposes a more public one in which the private role of insurance disappears through the elimination of the Health Promotion Entities (EPS), something that could remain in the system reform proposal that Petro has announced but to present to Congress in 2023. She served as director of social participation of the Bogotá Ministry of Health when Gustavo Petro was mayor.
Gloria Inés Ramírez, 66, was entrusted by Petro with the Ministry of Labor. She is an indicalist affiliated with the Communist Party and the Patriotic March. She studied physics and mathematics at the Technological University of Pereira. She was a senator between 2006 and 2014.
Ramírez was a key figure in the recognition of conscientious objection to compulsory military service, promoted by the National Association of Secondary Students.
For her part, Irene Vélez is the Minister of Mines and Energy. She is very close to Vice President Francia Márquez. Before her appointment, she worked as a full professor at the Universidad del Valle. She completed a Ph.D. in Political Geography at the University of Copenhagen and has experience working with communities on food sovereignty, agrochemicals, and mercury contamination from mining.
Susana Muhamad, 45, will be responsible for the Ministry of the Environment. She is a political scientist with a master’s degree in sustainable development, her appointment is one of the signs of Petro’s commitment to having a dose of youth and closeness in his cabinet, since she will be the minister who has worked the most with him.
Likewise, Catalina Velasco Campuzano is the new Minister of Housing. She is an economist with a master’s degree in public policy and a doctorate in political studies, she is one of the signs of commitment to experience and to the left in the cabinet. She was undersecretary and then secretary of Planning of Bogotá, with the first mayor elected by the left, Lucho Garzón, and Habitat of the second, Samuel Moreno.
Patricia Ariza, 76, will be in charge of the Ministry of Culture. Artist, poet, playwright and theater director, and a long-standing left-wing activist, her appointment is a sign of recognition of the traditional left and sectoral experience.
As an artist committed to politics, she co-founded the Teatro de la Candelaria, directed the Colombian Theater Corporation and founded the Women on Stage for Peace Festival.
In the Ministry of Sport will be María Isabel Urrutia, 57 years old. She is an athlete, sportswoman, winner of a gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and champion at the 1990 and 1994 World Weightlifting Championships. She was Colombia’s first gold medalist. Before being appointed Minister of Sport, she was in charge of directing the weightlifting league in Bogotá.
Also read: The US hopes to count on Petro to work on a “peaceful solution” in Venezuela
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