Colombia’s president, the leftist Gustavo Petro, fired three ministers from his cabinet on Monday, among them the centrist Alejandro Gaviria, from the education portfolio, whose criticisms of the health reform proposed by the government leaked to the press.
Text: RFI / AFP
“We are at a decisive moment for our reforms and we need more cohesion and determination (…) I appreciate the services provided by” Gaviria, Petro said during a presidential address in which he also relieved Olympic champion María Isabel Urrutia and playwright from their posts Patricia Ariza, in charge of the Sports and Culture portfolios respectively.
«I have decided to appoint Aurora Vergara as Minister of Education and Astrid Rodríguez as Minister of Sports; so that with new energies they can complete the process of reforms that have begun,” added Petro, without specifying who will assume the Ministry of Culture.
The first left-wing government in the history of Colombia presented a bill a couple of weeks ago that expands the role of the state in the health system. The text is discussed in Congress, where the ruling party has majorities thanks to a coalition with parties from the center, liberals and the moderate right.
The first changes in Petro’s cabinet come a day after the Cambio portal published a letter addressed to the president in which three ministers, including Gaviria, questioned “the fiscal impacts of the Project and its implications for the Budget.”
«I thank @petrogustavo for the invitation to be part of his government. My opinions always had a constructive purpose within the framework of a pluralist coalition government,” the outgoing minister said on Twitter after the presidential address.
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Former Petro ministers say there is a “malicious leak”
The Minister of Finance, José Ocampo, and the Minister of Agriculture, Cecilia López -who also signed the leaked document- accompanied Petro during his speech.
“The diversity of opinions is a value that I fully share,” added the president, who had earlier confirmed via Twitter that the letter “is true.”
However, Petro clarified that he took these observations into account and made adjustments to the text before presenting it to Congress.
According to the Ministry of Finance, the leaked letter was “an input prior to the filing of the reform,” the costs of which have yet to be defined.
In a tweet, Alejandro Gaviria described Cambio’s publication as a “malicious leak.”
Before coming to the Ministry of Education, Gaviria was in charge of the Health portfolio (2012-2017), during the tenure of the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Juan Manuel Santos.
From his new position, he questioned that the government’s health reform excluded private companies that currently operate the health system to hand over that task to the state.
His participation in the cabinet was well received by the Green party and the Liberals, who supported his unsuccessful candidacy for the presidency in last year’s elections.
Petro came to power on August 7 with an ambitious battery of reforms with which he hopes to strengthen the role of the State in the health, labor and pension systems.
In addition to its millionaire costs, the right-wing parties point out that the health reform encourages corruption.
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