Gustavo Petro, the first left-wing Colombian president, has broken all the molds in terms of the way of governing, with a great 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.“, said Petro in his inauguration speech on August 7, 2022, and since then he opened the doors of the Narino Palace, headquarters of the Executive, to the peasants, Afro-Colombians, indigenous people and trade unionists whom he considers the base of the “primary constituent“.
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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.“, he assures the agency EFE the senator Ivan Cepeda, who is part of the left-wing coalition Historical Pact, which brought Petro to the Presidency.
(See: Petro is reportedly working on a negotiation with Maduro, according to a government source).
According to Cepeda, Petro “The unemployment rate has dropped significantly, the dollar has been kept stable (…) and the country has been shown 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: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.“.
Social support for Petro.
Between the center and friends
However, Petro’s tendency to ignore opinions that go against his political ideology They emerged 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’s top officials out of the cabinet within months. Ministers of Education, Alejandro Gaviria; Agriculture, Cecilia Lopez; Finance, Jose Antonio Ocampo, and the director of the National Planning Department, Jorge Ivan Gonzalez, considered the most sensible voice in the Government.
In parallel, Laura Sarabia’s power has grown, a young lawyer who, beyond her position as Director of the Administrative Department of the Presidency of the Republic (Dapre), She is the president’s right-hand woman and, in practice, the most powerful woman in the country, who controls access to the president.
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“Gustavo Petro tries to surround himself with people who are very loyal to him and his project because ultimately there are not many prepared left-wing officials that he can count on, so he has the tendency to make a small circle of people, regardless of whether they do not have the necessary experience, and that has affected the way he governs.“, he explains to EFE the political analyst Yann Basset, professor at the Faculty of International Studies at the Universidad del Rosario.
Other characteristics of the president that create friction are: his chronic unpunctuality and the 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.
Laura Sarabia and Gustavo Petro.
The problem of corruption
Half of the Petro government has also been marked by allegations of corruption and, although there are no convictions in any of the cases so far, “The fact that he 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.
(See: Petro ‘compared hydroelectric companies with drug trafficking’ and unions responded).
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.
EFE
