Colombian Politics Digest I: Petro’s first weeks
The elections are over and it’s been nearly a month since Gustavo Petro was elected President of Colombia. After my ‘election digest’ series during the election campaign, it’s time for a ‘politics digest’ to discuss recent events in Colombian politics.
I invite everyone to read my analysis of the runoff results, as well as my analysis of the first round results. You may also be interested to read my post about President-elect Gustavo Petro’s platform.
Be sure to follow Colombian Politics and Elections!
The presidential transition
Gustavo Petro will formally take office as the next President of Colombia on August 7, the anniversary of the Battle of Boyacá in 1819.
The new Congress, elected in March, will take office on July 20, Colombia’s national independence day.
The ‘transition’ in both the executive and legislative branches are, therefore, the main issues in Colombian politics for now.
The presidential transition (empalme) process has begun. On June 23, a few days after his victory, Petro met with Iván Duque, the outgoing president, at the Casa de Nariño (the presidential palace).
It must have been an awkward and uncomfortable meeting, given how Iván Duque repeatedly interfered in the presidential campaign to criticize Petro, and how Gustavo Petro has been Duque’s leading opponent since 2018. However, it’s certainly not the first time that the incoming and outgoing presidents are at odds and Colombia has had peaceful, orderly transitions of power for decades.
The transition process in Colombia is not regulated by any law (although a government bill was discussed in the last congressional session). The outgoing administration’s transition team includes finance minister José Manuel Restrepo, Duque’s chief of staff María Paula Correa (a very close and powerful confidante of Duque), the director of the administrative department of the presidency (Dapre) Víctor Muñoz and the director of the National Planning Department (DNP).
Gustavo Petro’s transition team is headed by Daniel Rojas (his platform coordinator), Carolina Corcho (doctor and vice president of the Colombian Medical Federation), former Partido de la U senator Mauricio Lizcano and Afro-Colombian academic Aurora Vergara.
Petro’s extended transition team with all the ministries, agencies and specific policy priorities includes 32 coordinators. Several of them have already been appointed to his future cabinet (which I’ll discuss in a bit), so these names can also be strong indications of future ministers.
Petro’s transition team gives some hints as to the political direction of his government and who he’ll govern with. As with his campaign, his transition team is a mix of left-wing politicians (including academics), longstanding allies and old colleagues from his mayoral administration in Bogotá (2012–2016), new allies, career politicians from traditional/neo-traditional parties, former santistas (people who worked for President Juan Manuel Santos) and some people from civil society with no political background.
His transition team includes prominent figures from his campaign. His campaign manager, Alfonso Prada (a career politician and former Green representative and later secretary general in the presidency during Santos’ second term), coordinates the transition with the Ministry of the Interior (the most ‘political’ ministry) while outgoing Liberal senator Luis Fernando Velasco (another career politician who was one of the first Liberals to support Petro) coordinates the transition with the presidential office.
Newer allies also have their place. Most notably, former centrist presidential pre-candidate Alejandro Gaviria, who endorsed Petro in the runoff, is coordinating the transition in the education ministry and seems destined to a prominent cabinet position (most likely education).
Other traditional politicians are also well represented in Petro’s transition, most surprisingly perhaps being the senior role given to former senator Mauricio Lizcano, a latecomer to Petro’s campaign (he endorsed him in May). Lizcano, the son of a congressman held hostage by the FARC for 8 years, is a career politician from Caldas who served three terms in Congress (in the House from 2006 to 2010 and in the Senate from 2010 to 2018) and was president of the Senate in 2016–17, for the Partido de la U. Lizcano was an uribista — Álvaro Uribe was his best man at his first wedding — and later a santista, before supporting Vargas Lleras in 2018. Since 2019, Lizcano has transformed himself into a more ‘alternative’ politician and launched his own movement, Gente en Movimiento, which won one seat in the House in Caldas in March (placing first with 16% of the vote). Lizcano has been implicated in several scandals and judicial investigations. Petro has been willing to ally with traditional politicians who come from different political backgrounds in an effort to build a strong congressional majority.
Of course, Petro’s transition team also includes a lot of left-wing politicians and people who already worked for him back in Bogotá. These include Susana Muhamad, Petro’s secretary of the environment and a city councillor in Bogotá since 2020, who was recently appointed as environment minister.
In terms of political direction, the transition team is mostly sending a moderate and cautious message, particularly for the most sensitive portfolios (finance, defence).
Petro’s cabinet
Like everywhere else, the early days of an incoming administration are filled with ‘cabinetology’ rumours: who will be in the new cabinet. The makeup of the cabinet sends strong messages about the government’s direction, the political and strategic choices it is making, the representation it is giving to different parties and factions in its coalition as well as a good number of symbolic messages it wants to send (gender parity etc.).
Colombia currently has 18 ministries, and Gustavo Petro wants to create two more — the new Ministry of Equality, promised during the campaign and to be given to Vice President Francia Márquez, and a new Ministry of Peace and Security, a recommendation of the Truth Commission which Petro has accepted. The creation of new ministries requires a law, so the new ministries won’t be created for at least a few months.
Petro has appointed seven cabinet ministers so far.
The Minister of Finance is one of the most important appointments, doubly so for Petro, whose economic proposals generate fear and anxiety among investors and much of the business elite. Since his election, Petro has gone out of his way to reassure the markets, investors and the business elites. In his victory speech, he said that “we will develop capitalism. Not because we adore it but because we must overcome feudalism in Colombia”, and during the campaign he repeatedly said that he would not expropriate private property.
On June 30, Petro announced that José Antonio Ocampo will be the finance minister. Ocampo, currently a professor at Columbia University, is an acclaimed economist who has previously served as agriculture minister (1993–1994) under César Gaviria and director of the National Planning Department (DNP, 1994–1996) and finance minister (1996–1997) under Ernesto Samper. He later went on to serve in the UN, as executive secretary of the ECLAC (CEPAL in Spanish, 1998–2003) and undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs (2003–2007). Most recently, in Colombia, he was on the board of directors of the central bank, the Bank of the Republic, from 2017 to 2019, appointed by Juan Manuel Santos. During the presidential campaign, Ocampo was a policy advisor to centrist candidate Sergio Fajardo. Ocampo is a neo-Keynesian economist, close to Joseph Stiglitz, who supports a more interventionist role for the state, in line with Petro’s general political philosophy, but he is no radical leftist. He is clearly a cautious and moderate pick to reassure the markets and investors, who are still clearly uneasy about Petro’s intentions. Ocampo’s first major challenge will be to present and defend the new government’s very ambitious tax reform, which will be one of the first items on the government’s agenda in August.
The business world’s anxiety and uncertainty about Petro’s victory may have influenced the significant fall in the Colombian peso against the US dollar. On June 17, one US dollar was worth about 3,900 pesos; on July 12, one US dollar was worth 4,600 pesos (it has since started falling back to 4,400). However, other external macroeconomic factors (US recession fears, commodity prices etc.) also play a major role.
Álvaro Leyva, a veteran politician and former Conservative, will be the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Leyva, who is 79, has been in politics since the 1970s, notably serving as representative (1978–1982), senator (1982–1984, 1985–1990), member of the 1991 constituent assembly and minister of mines and energy (1984–1985). Most importantly, Leyva has worked tirelessly for peace since the 1980s, and developed close ties with the FARC leadership — so close that he became seen as their negotiator, or at least their preferred intermediary with governments. He played a crucial role in the negotiations for the transitional justice section of the peace agreement with the FARC. In 2015, during the peace process with the FARC, Leyva was part of a special commission (himself chosen by the FARC) which played a crucial role in negotiating the transitional justice framework, including the JEP, in the final peace agreement.
Given his decades of experience in peace processes, Leyva can be a fine diplomat and he will support one of Petro’s main priorities: relaunching a peace process with the ELN guerrilla.
Carolina Corcho, a doctor (psychiatrist) and healthcare activist, will be the Minister of Health. She has been close to Petro for several years, having served in secondary roles in the health department during his administration in Bogotá. Like him, Corcho is a longstanding critic of Colombia’s mixed-market healthcare system and particularly the health insurance providers (EPS), which are intermediaries and stingy gatekeepers, arguing that they’ve turned healthcare into a business rather than a right. Corcho, like Petro, supports eliminating the EPS as part of a healthcare reform (a controversial idea), so her appointment is a signal that, at least on this issue, Petro is not seeking to be as conciliatory and moderate. She became famous during the pandemic, as vice president of the Colombian Medical Federation, denouncing the working conditions of healthcare workers and being very critical of the government’s pandemic response and the vaccination campaign. Corcho notably opposed school reopenings, supported strict full lockdowns into the spring of 2021 and criticized the full economic reopening in November 2021.
Corcho is probably the most controversial cabinet pick so far. As an activist, she often tends to base her arguments and statements on her own opinions rather than facts, even to the point of spreading disinformation or fake news. A Twitter thread by a right-leaning lawyer listing up all her controversies went viral:
Her most famous controversy was when she essentially blamed all 1.8 preventable deaths between 1998 and 2011 on the healthcare system and the EPS (including, yes, homicides), for which she was criticized by researchers, Alejandro Gaviria and even health minister Fernando Ruiz.
Alejandro Gaviria, a former centrist presidential pre-candidate who endorsed Petro in the runoff, will be Minister of Education. Gaviria is an economist and academic who served as health minister under Juan Manuel Santos (2012–2018) and as rector of the University of Los Andes (2019–2021), the prestigious private university of the economic and technocratic elites. If you’ve read my previous posts over the past months, you may already be familiar with him. Gaviria has experience in the private and public sectors, academic, think tanks and the media. After finishing fourth in the Centro Esperanza primary in March with 15.6%, Gaviria supported Fajardo, but even before the first round he suggested that he would support Petro in the runoff, telling the FT that Colombia was sitting on a volcano and that a “controlled explosion” under Petro was preferable. He endorsed Petro as the “most responsible, institutional and liberal” option for change.
In his political and personal philosophy, he is a committed progressive liberal. His liberalism, and his record as health minister, means he’s not particularly well liked by the more left-wing parts of Petro’s coalition (most notably his future cabinet colleague, Carolina Corcho!). While Gaviria has the talent, skills and experience to be a good minister, his challenge will be to reconcile his liberal outlook on education with Petro’s more left-wing program. The more left-wing factions of the student movement in public unviersities and the main teachers’ union (Fecode) are likely to be unhappy about his appointment.
Cecilia López, a veteran centre-left politician, will be the Minister of Agriculture, returning to a portfolio she held 25 years ago, during Ernesto Samper’s presidency. Cecilia López, who is 79, has been in politics and public office since the late 1970s and has ambassador (1985–1988), director of the old Social Security Institute (1990–1992), environment minister (1996–1997), agriculture minister (1996–1997), national planning director (1997–1998) and Liberal senator (2006–2010). A longtime Liberal, she was a samperista in the 1990s — with a more left-wing or interventionist economic outlook, and among those who were skeptical of the rapid neoliberal economic ‘opening’ (apertura) under Gaviria’s presidency. She was a close ally of Samper, defending him through the Proceso 8.000 scandal, and served in his government as minister of the environment, minister of agriculture (from which she was pushed out under pressure from the Liberal caciques of the Caribbean coast) and finally as director of the DNP. She returned to politics in the early 2000s and was elected to the Senate in 2006 (on the Liberal list), and distinguished herself as one of the best opposition legislators, leading strong debates on the second Uribe administration’s scandals and on issues like free trade. She unsuccessfully ran for president in 2010, but finished fourth in the 2009 Liberal primary. In 2014, she was part of the Santos government’s Misión Rural, an expert group led by José Antonio Ocampo, in charge of coming up with recommendations on rural development. She supported Gustavo Petro during the 2022 campaign. She has a very difficult (and historic) task as agriculture minister: lead Petro’s agrarian reform.
Susana Muhamad will be the Minister of the Environment. Muhamad, a senior member of Petro’s party (Colombia Humana) and Bogotá city councillor since 2020, is the the first true, longtime Petro ally appointed to cabinet so far. Muhamad, who was already with Petro in his first presidential campaign back in 2010, served as secretary of the environment (2012–2013, 2014–2016) and briefly secretary general (2013–2014) during his administration. In the city council, she has been one of the leading opponents of mayor Claudia López, particularly on issues like police brutality. She has announced clear (but expected) stances against fracking and aerial aspersion with glyphosate, and wants her new ministry to be more powerful with a ‘transversal role’ over more policy files.
Patricia Ariza, a poet, playwright, actress and activist, will be the Minister of Culture. Ariza, who is 76, was active in the Nadaist movement in her youth and founded the Teatro La Candelaria in Bogotá in 1966, the first alternative theatre in Colombia. She is a survivor of the genocide of the UP. Unlike other cabinet appointees thus far, she has never held any public office, although she has experience in the issue.
Caracol Radio reported the likely names of the other ministers. The interior minister would unsurprisingly be Alfonso Prada, while Armando Benedetti would be Petro’s private secretary (perhaps until he decides if he wants to go for mayor of Barranquilla?) and Luis Fernando Velasco would head Dapre, the presidential administrative office. The defence minister would be Mónica Cifuentes, former legal advisor to the peace process, and the justice ministry would either go to Martha Lucia Zamora (a lawyer and former magistrate who was Petro’s secretary general in Bogotá) or Luis Guillermo Pérez (lawyer and currently the CNE magistrate representing the opposition since 2018).
Fajardo’s running mate, Luis Gilberto Murillo, seen as a possible energy and mines minister, will instead be Colombia’s ambassador to the United States, the most important and prestigious diplomatic appointment. Murillo, who served as environment minister (2016–2018) under Santos, lived in exile in the United States for several years and had dual citizenship (until he relinquished his US citizenship to become ambassador). From his experience in Washington, Murillo has connections with the US political world.
Thus far, Petro’s cabinet is quite politically diverse (like his campaign), with people coming from different political backgrounds. Most of his picks are experts in their respective fields, and many have already held public office.
The experience, careers and age of many of his ministers means that they’re in government to complete a long career, so they’re less likely to be yes men to the president — something which is important, given that Petro is a tough person to work with and he tends to only listen to the opinions of those he considers to be his intellectual equals.
In political terms, so far, Petro isn’t giving any ‘quotas’ to potential partners in the traditional parties in exchange for their support. Past administrations, including Duque (after 2019) and Santos, had regularly appointed cabinet members in ‘representation’ of other parties in exchange for ‘governability’ (gobernabilidad) — that is, their support in Congress.
Petro has indicated that he is open to a ‘co-government’ (cogobierno) — which he contrasts with the old ‘system’ of governability (which he says meant buying off congressmen) — based on policy agreements made over the table. Petro’s idea of cogobierno is much closer to the formal coalition agreements, with cabinet representation, in European countries. Thus far, however, there’s been no real ‘European-like’ coalition negotiations with other parties, like the Liberals or the Partido de la U.
Finally, Petro will keep his promise to have a gender-balanced cabinet. Of the seven ministers already appointed, four are women.
His challenge will be to keep that team together and avoid the very high turnover he had in his team when he was mayor of Bogotá.
Coalition games
The other priority of any incoming government in Colombia is building a solid governing coalition in the new Congress, while the parties decide how to split up the congressional leadership over the next four years.
On paper, the Congress elected in March is not particularly favourable to Petro, despite the Pacto Histórico’s success (20 senators, 28 representatives). The Pacto and its most likely allies (the indigenous members, the ex-FARC’s 5 ex officio seats, the Greens and the ASI) only hold 39 out of 107 seats in the Senate and around 60 out of 186 seats in the House. Therefore, Petro needs to gain the support of other parties in order to get a stable, solid majority in Congress to pass his agenda. For that, he needs to look to the traditional parties: the Liberals, the Conservatives and the Partido de la U as well as Cambio Radical (CR). With the support of at least two of these parties in both houses, he has an absolute majority.
During his campaign, Petro proved to be very pragmatic, willing to ally with just about anyone. In his campaign, he also repeatedly said that he wants to build a ‘great national agreement’ (gran acuerdo nacional), envisioned as some sort of broad-based dialogue with all political movements (including the opposition), different sectors of society and the regions. He’s also said that, once in office, he wants to go beyond the Pacto Histórico (his electoral coalition) towards a Frente Amplio (broad front), likely meaning a broad governing coalition with parties other than the Pacto.
The different terms (Pacto, Frente Amplio, Acuerdo Nacional) have caused some confusion and misunderstanding. The Pacto is his left-wing electoral coalition, the Frente Amplio is a future congressional coalition with other parties and the ‘national agreement’ is a potential dialogue with all parties and societal groups.
Even before he won, Petro’s campaign organized the first meeting of his ‘national agreement’, moderated by Alejandro Gaviria. Since then, Petro has given hints of what he means by that by meeting with Rodolfo Hernández and Álvaro Uribe. After his meeting with Petro, Rodolfo tweeted ‘the change has begun’, which really upset some of his more right-wing supporters — but that just shows they don’t know much about him, given that Rodolfo never really disliked Petro and was perhaps closer to petrismo than uribismo.
The meeting with Álvaro Uribe, on June 29, was quite historic. Just weeks ago, a mature meeting between the two old political rivals would have been unfathomable. From what came out of the meeting, and Uribe’s press conference afterwards, the meeting was cordial with good will on both sides: a mature exchange of ideas and views between political opponents, something which Colombia needs more of. Uribe appeared ready to support the government on certain issues, like poverty reduction, and was open to ongoing dialogue with the incoming government. Although judging by the pictures, Uribe was clearly a bit ill at ease at first…
The opposition
Under the opposition statute (a law adopted in 2018 governing the status and prerogatives of the opposition) parties must, within a month of the new government taking office, declare themselves as governing parties, in opposition or independent. They can then change their official declaration only once within the government’s term.
The law provides certain rights to the opposition, including additional funding, access to public broadcasting, representation in the congressional leadership (second vice presidency) and the right to official rebuttals including official responses to presidential addresses. On the other hand, the party leadership and former electoral candidates of independent and opposition parties cannot get government appointments.
Petro’s majority
As aforementioned, Petro on his own does not have a congressional majority.
One can try to govern without a congressional majority, but run the risk of being held hostage by parties and congressmen seeking to extract various concessions and benefits. Duque tried to govern without a stable congressional majority for the first two years of his term, and struggled to get much of his ambitious (and controversial) legislative agenda through. Petro is clearly intent on avoiding this experience, and instead wants a strong congressional majority — like Juan Manuel Santos’ Unidad Nacional, a real steamroller for most of Santos’ two terms.
The Greens were the first to announce that they would support the government. This was expected, since the bulk of the Green congressional caucus endorsed Petro either in the first or second round (as did all three co-presidents: Antonio Navarro, Antanas Mockus and Carlos Ramón González). They formalized their declaration as a governing party on June 25. The Greens have 8 senators among the 13 elected from the Greens-Centro Esperanza list in March.
The Independent Social Alliance (Alianza Social Independiente, ASI) is a small party which usually serves as a label of convenience for different politicians. It has 4 senators (elected from the Greens-CE list), who all supported Petro in the runoff. The ASI has also declared itself in support of the incoming government.
Petro is looking to the traditional hinge parties — the Liberals, Conservatives, the Partido de la U and Cambio Radical (CR). These parties have usually tended to support all successive governments, going back decades, and have very little experience actually being in opposition.
None of these parties supported Petro in the election, although some of their members and congressmen did. The Conservatives and La U were formally part of Fico’s coalition, while Liberal leader César Gaviria ended up personally endorsing Fico (as did most of his caucus) after a very public falling-out with Petro in late March (see here). CR did not formally endorse any candidate, but most of their machines, most notably charismo, supported Fico.
Politics are very ‘dynamic’ in Colombia, and 360 degree shifts not uncommon. It quickly became clear that none of these four parties want to be in opposition, but all of them are hoping to get something in exchange if they are to support the new government in Congress.
On June 22, Liberal leader César Gaviria announced that his party wished to be part of the governing coalition and that, in any case, it would not be in opposition. One day earlier, Liberal congressmen had asked Gaviria to support the new government.
Gaviria put it in very crude, old politics terms, saying that with regards to eventual participation in the governing coalition, they’re waiting for Petro’s position regarding their “participation and political representation” — that is, asking for bureaucratic quotas and appointments (and their proper place in the congressional leadership) in exchange for their support.
Gaviria also used the opportunity to settle scores with dissident Liberals who had joined the Pacto against his own will (like outgoing senator Luis Fernando Velasco), saying that he doesn’t care about their opinions as they had left the party. He also said that those Liberals who had supported Petro in the runoff would receive no special treatment. Gaviria’s team of emissaries to meet with Petro only included congressmen close to him, excluding the petrista ‘rebels’ in the party.
However, Petro preferred to negotiate directly with his older Liberal allies, first and foremost controversial outgoing senator Julián Bedoya (accused of fraudulently obtaining his law degree). So far, Petro hasn’t really satisfied Gaviria’s conditions. However, Petro and César Gaviria met in Italy, where Petro is currently on vacation. According to La Silla Vacía, neither of them got what they wanted out of the meeting.
Nevertheless, shortly afterwards, on July 13, the Liberals officially announced they would declare themselves as a government party. With the Liberals in the coalition, Petro has an absolute majority in the House and is only two votes short of one of in the Senate. It is a big victory for Petro, as in the end he didn’t need to choose between Gaviria and the petrista rebels in the party, and without having to concede any cabinet representation to Gaviria (as far as we know, for now). Internally, according to La Silla, a rebellion led by Bedoya and a few other petrista congressmen, hoping to preempt Gaviria in supporting Petro, failed: the decision to support the government was taken by the gavirista majorities in the party leadership and caucus. The decision was negotiated by Roy Barreras and Alfonso Prada (representing Petro) and Simón Gaviria, César Gaviria’s son.
The Conservatives should logically be in opposition to a left-wing government, but logic is not something that Colombian Conservatives care about. They haven’t been fully, 100%, in opposition to any government since Virgilio Barco (1986–1990), and their caucus is very much a group of regional machines and other such types who require access to government money and associated benefits to maintain their political careers.
As with the Liberals, Petro has dealt with the Conservatives through an ally in the caucus, senator Carlos Andrés Trujillo, leader of the dominant political machine in Itagüí (Antioquia). Trujillo is a close ally of Julián Bedoya and Daniel Quintero, the left-wing mayor of Medellín and Petro’s most important ally in Antioquia (Quintero was, of course, controversially suspended from office for implicitly supporting Petro): the current Conservative president of the Medellín city council, Lucas Cañas, is from Trujillo’s group. Trujillo didn’t support Petro during the election (but didn’t openly support Fico either), although Cañas didn’t vote for Rodolfo in the runoff.
Trujillo met with Petro ‘in the name of the Conservative Party and in representation of its congressional caucus’ on June 23. This set off an internal conflict in the party, pitting Trujillo and the majority of the caucus against the party’s president, Omar Yepes (an old Conservative cacique from Caldas). That same day, Yepes issued a statement in the name of the party in which he urged the party to be in opposition. Former president Andrés Pastrana, who has had a very schizophrenic, love-hate relationship with the party for over a decade now, also urged the party to be in opposition (not surprising given that Pastrana spent much of the campaign spreading conspiracy theories about left-wing vote fraud).
On June 25, 39 Conservative congressmen (the majority of the caucus), led by Trujillo, declared that they would not be in opposition and would support the government’s legislative agenda (subject to some basic ‘principles’: the 1991 constitution, private property and individual liberties). Petro welcomed their announcement on his Twitter, once again mentioning late Conservative leader’s Álvaro Gómez Hurtado’s idea of the acuerdo sobre lo fundamental (agreement on the fundamentals) which he’s quite fond of rhetorically.
Omar Yepes announced that he would resign as Conservative leader. The party duly accepted his resignation and unanimously elected Trujillo as the new party president on June 30. Therefore, the ‘pro-government’ faction in the party — the majority of the caucus, but presumably a minority of the party’s base and membership — resoundingly won the brief internal conflict, a major boon for Petro’s governability in Congress.
This stitch-up is reminiscent of Santos-era Conservatives, with a predominantly pro-government caucus but the party’s base more opposed. Under Santos, the Conservatives were pro-government because they got marmalade (pork-barrel funding). So far, Petro hasn’t given out bureaucratic ‘quotas’ to other parties in his cabinet, in the traditional sense of the term. However, Petro gave Trujillo a little nod in his transition team: Guillermo Reyes, former CNE magistrate (2002–2006) and vice minister of the interior and justice under the second Uribe administration, is coordinating the transition with the justice ministry. Reyes is Trujillo’s lawyer and was his adviser when Trujillo was mayor of Itagüí several years ago.
The Partido de la U has never been in opposition since it was founded in 2005 by various uribistas, many of them Liberal dissidents. It isn’t going to start now. After the election, the party’s president, Dilian Francisca Toro, said the party was willing to participate in Petro’s great national agreement. On June 26, the party’s caucus announced that it would be part of the governing coalition, but only for the election of the congressional leadership for the time being. It postponed a decision on being fully part of the governing coalition, but it too said that it would not be in opposition.
Petro claimed on Twitter that the U had decided to be a governing party, but it seems he may have been a bit too quick. Toro corrected him, saying that the party caucus had not made a decision yet.
It is more unclear what Cambio Radical (CR) will do, but again there is little appetite in the party to be in opposition. While some, like senator-elect David Luna, have said they would in the opposition, they likely don’t speak for the majority of the CR caucus. Prior to the election, CR and the U had formed a common bloc in Congress, but it is unclear if that deal still holds up. Luna says that the congressional caucus is split between those who want to be in opposition (like him), those who want to be independent and those who want to support the government.
Former vice president Germán Vargas Lleras, now a weekly columnist in El Tiempo, wrote a post-election column praising Petro’s ‘invitation to dialogue’ and saying that the ‘great national agreement’ “sounds good and makes a lot of sense”. Petro met with Vargas Lleras on June 28. Vargas Lleras still wields significant influence in CR.
In short, Petro is off to a very promising start in cobbling together a strong majority in Congress.
The opposition and the ‘independents’
With the Liberals, Conservatives, La U and most likely CR all making clear that they have no interest in being in the opposition, this leaves the uribista Centro Democrático (CD) as the only strong opposition party in Congress. All this makes for a real sense of déjà vu, a flashback to Santos’ Unidad Nacional coalition, particularly in his second term, when Uribe’s CD led the opposition.
Back then, from 2014 to 2018, the CD was a very effective and ruthless opposition. However, circumstances are different now: the party is weaker than in 2014, more divided and most obviously lacks Uribe’s presence in the Senate. They will also need to bear the weight of Iván Duque’s unpopular government for quite some time to come.
No single obvious congressional opposition leader has emerged yet from the CD, but there are strong contenders. One is Miguel Uribe Turbay, who was the party’s top candidate for Senate and won the most votes of any CD senatorial candidate (over 223,000). The other is the far-right’s darling María Fernanda Cabal, who won the second-most votes of the CD senatorial candidates (over 196,000) and quickly proclaimed herself as an opposition leader with the label #SoyOpositor. Others in the CD’s reduced senatorial caucus may also have ambitions, like Alirio Barrera, Paloma Valencia and Paola Holguín.
Rodolfo Hernández, as the runner-up in the presidential election with 10.6 million votes, might seem as the most obvious ‘opposition leader’, just like Petro was in 2018. Indeed, since a 2015 constitutional reform and under the 2018 opposition statute, the runner-up in the presidential election and their running mate are automatically entitled to a seat in the Senate and the House of Representatives, respectively. After some indecision and confusing back and forth, Rodolfo has confirmed that he will take his seat in the Senate (and his running mate, Marelen Castillo, will take hers in the House).
However, Rodolfo Hernández has been vague as to whether he’ll actually be in the opposition. On June 23, when he first announced that he’d take his seat in the Senate (before having second thoughts later on), he said that he would assume a “position of independence” from the government and “support the initiatives” that he considers good for the country. He and Marelen Castillo also signaled their openness in participating in Petro’s dialogue. Rodolfo met with Petro, while Marelen Castillo met with Francia Márquez. This raised the interesting matter of whether those who will hold congressional seats by virtue of the opposition statute need to be in opposition.
On July 7, in a Facebook Live video in which he confirmed that he would take his seat, he said that he would “expose how and where they’re stealing” without ever mentioning the word ‘opposition’ or even making any references to the incoming administration. However, in his letter to the CNE formally requesting his credentials as senator, he wrote that he was “willing” to declare himself in opposition under the terms of the law. Yet, just 24 hours before that, he told Blu Radio that he was unsure he’d oppose Petro, saying that he didn’t see how he could oppose him if he felt that he was doing something good. Go figure.
Rodolfo might not have much interest in leading the opposition, but he wants to build up his own political party, the Liga de Gobernantes Anticorrupción (Liga). The Liga, which elected two representatives in Santander in March, is very much a bare-bones personal vehicle with little internal structure. It does not have legal party status, and doesn’t meet the constitutional requirements for legal recognition (3% of valid votes nationally in the House or Senate elections). With the precedent of the Constitutional Court’s 2021 decision granting legal recognition to Petro’s party, Colombia Humana, Rodolfo will seek legal recognition for the Liga.
After the election, many rodolfistas including Rodolfo’s wife Socorro Oliveros and his eldest son (who are two of his closest political confidantes) wanted him to organize a strong party, to participate in next year’s local elections. Rodolfo was unsure at first, but now seems determined to help organize and structure a party, to be led by his wife. According to La Silla Vacía, Rodolfo wants to build ‘regional franchises’ for next year’s local elections that would replicate his political strategy. The ideal candidates would be businessmen like him or his grassroots volunteers from this year’s campaign.
Ingrid Betancourt, who ended her own futile presidential bid and endorsed Rodolfo before the first round, has said she would be in opposition. This will likely go her for party, Verde Oxígeno (Green Oxygen), as well. This creates a conflict with the two congressmen elected under that label, Humberto de la Calle (Senate) and Daniel Carvalho (House), who are both on bad terms with Betancourt since the election campaign. Both of them have said that they would be independent vis-à-vis the new government, rather than in opposition. Carvalho has said that he would support initiatives he supports on issues dear to him, and be a “respectful interlocutor”. De la Calle said he’d support beneficial initiatives and oppose harmful ones.
On July 14, de la Calle and Carvalho formed the ‘congressional committee’ of the Green Oxygen party and reiterated their intention to declare themselves independent of the government.
Their decision has caused another internal conflict between them and Betancourt, who told Semana that she considered their decision to be a “declaration of war”. She said that they cannot take political decisions without consulting the party leadership (her) and without following procedures. De la Calle and Carvalho have taken the issue to court, asking a judge to suspend an upcoming general assembly of the party.
The Nuevo Liberalismo’s leadership, led by Juan Manuel Galán, endorsed Rodolfo in the second round and has declared itself independent. However, the party’s members who endorsed Petro, led by former top candidate Mábel Lara (as well as Yolanda Perea, Afro-Colombian feminist leader who was also on the Senate list in March), asked that there be instead an honest and open dialogue with the incoming government and that the party should be part of the ‘transformations’. Galán responded with a curt statement in which he says that he’s the boss and that all decisions are to be taken by him only.
Mábel Lara and Yolanda Perea responded by leaving the party. Mábel Lara, who is part of Petro’s transition team with RTVC (the public broadcaster), has been mentioned as a potential cabinet minister — but under the opposition statute, even after leaving the party, she would have to wait a year before she can receive government appointments. Former Ombudsman Carlos Negret, who was also on the party’s closed list for Senate in March, also left the party, criticizing Juan Manuel Galán’s ‘wrong decisions’. He had, however, already been distanced from his party after endorsing Fico in the first round, against the party’s official stance (part of the centrist coalition behind Fajardo). Outgoing senator Rodrigo Lara, a very harsh critic of the Galán family’s management of the party, also sent in his resignation as a member to the party, which told him that he was never a member — I think Lara did that just to troll Galán, which is pretty funny.
Galán’s authoritarian attitude and the series of high-profile resignations reinforce the idea that the Galán brothers are running the reborn party as a family business. The Nuevo Liberalismo was already badly weakened after the party failed to pass the 3% threshold in the Senate election in March, despite having a promising list with talented candidates. However, with hindsight, running a separate list from the rest of the Centro Esperanza coalition and as a brand new party with no structures was a bad idea. Now, a lot of former candidates are blaming Galán for arbitrary decisions, miscalculations and the opaque way in which he’s run the party.
The congressional leadership
The presidencies of both houses (and other leadership positions in both houses) have one year terms (one legislative year or legislatura, July 20 to June 20). The president of the Senate, who is also the president of Congress, is the most prestigious and high-profile leadership position in Congress. The president of the House is typically less visible, but still important in political terms. The presidents of both houses manage the agenda, set the priority for bills and gives the floor to members. A friendly president in either house can greatly help the president’s legislative agenda, nudging and pushing it along, while hostile presidents can effectively delay or even scuttle the president’s legislative agenda.
Usually, the major parties agree in advance to split the presidencies of both houses over the congressional term.
A common saying in Colombian politics says that the first year of Congress belongs to the president, the second year is shared, the third year belongs to Congress and the fourth year belongs to no one. This reflects the gradual evaporation of a president’s political capital and honeymoon with legislators. Therefore, the first year is perhaps the most important for the executive as it is when the new government needs to pass the national development plan for the next four years and tries to pass the biggest items on its policy agenda including constitutional reforms. The new Congress also elects the Comptroller General. Petro has a very ambitious and packed legislative agenda for the first year, starting with a big tax reform that wants to raise a lot of money, so it is very important for him to have a friendly congressional leadership and a big coalition.
In the first year, there is an unwritten rule that the largest party in the respective house holds the presidency for that year. This would imply that the Pacto holds the presidency of the Senate, while the Liberals hold the presidency of the House.
After a caucus meeting attended by Petro, the Pacto agreed on Roy Barreras as its candidate for president of the Senate. Barreras is the quintessential traditional politician — senator since 2010, representative for a term before that and already president of the Senate in 2012–13. He has been, in succession, pastranista, uribista, santista and (since 2021) petrista, and has managed to be a convincingly passionate and vocal defender of each of them, with his trademark histrionic personality. Barreras, to his credit, owns up to his chameleonic past: last year, he starred as himself in a theatre production about his record in Congress.
He is now Petro’s ruthless and shrewd political/congressional operator (as we saw in the Petrovideos) who knows the workings of Congress inside and out. Barreras is very much a pragmatic pick: a well known incumbent with ties with other parties (and not hated by his colleagues), an experienced legislator who has already been on the government’s side (instead of always in the opposition, like most of the Pacto), an insider knowledge of how Congress operates and a skilled operator who can ensure the success of the government’s agenda. He is, however, controversial because he’s very much a traditional politician with the habits, behaviour and principles of the old world, so hardly ‘change’.
His nomination has led to the first public divisions in the Pacto post-election. His two rivals for the job, Gustavo Bolívar (Petro’s right-hand man in the Senate since 2018) and Polo party president and veteran senator Alexander López (freshly reelected to his fifth term), both criticized Barreras’ nomination, saying it was not democratic, concerted or after dialogue. Bolívar has since continued to publicly criticize Barreras.
It’s obvious that the president-elect has a word to say in the selection of the president of the Senate in the first year. In 2018, Iván Duque pushed to have Ernesto Macías as the CD’s president of the Senate for the first year. It’s clear that Petro wants Barreras as president of the Senate in 2022–2023, for the reasons listed above. Neither Gustavo Bolívar nor Alexander López, even if they’re both longtime left-wingers (unlike Barreras the chameleon), have what Petro is looking for from the president of the Senate. Bolívar is controversial and hated by other senators, who pointedly did not elect him as second vice president — the opposition’s reserved spot — in 2021. Alexander López has always been in opposition and therefore has no experience in ensuring the success of the president’s agenda in Congress.
Roy Barreras has said that he’s going to make senators work overtime to push through Petro’s agenda quickly. He says he will step on the accelerator: the permanent commissions in both houses will sit in parallel, the plenaries of both houses will be held simultaneously and members will sit four days a week rather than just two. In addition, he says that the president will make heavy use of the ‘urgent consideration procedure’ (mensaje de urgencia) under article 163 of the constitution — in which case the respective house of Congress must make a decision within 30 days, and can allow permanent commissions to deliberate jointly.
This ‘feet on the accelerator’ strategy is controversial. CD senator María Fernanda Cabal called it a coup. For many, it is similar to the “fast track”, the special (and time-limited) legislative procedure used by the Santos administration to expedite approval of the legislation required to implement the peace agreement in 2017. Petro tried to calm things down by saying that his ‘fast track’ is only the mensaje de urgencia used by all presidents since 1991.
The new government’s priorities in the first congressional session (which lasts from July 20 through December 16) include the tax reform, the agrarian/land reform, a political reform and a reform to eliminate the Procuraduría to create a big anti-corruption Fiscalía (attorney general’s office) in the judicial branch. The healthcare, pensions and education reforms that Petro has promised will likely wait until next year, in the second session (now from February 16 to June 20).
By unwritten tradition, the Liberals should hold the presidency of the House for the first year. However, the Pacto and its closest allies are not keen on respecting this tradition and would like the presidency of the House for themselves as well. Bogotá rep. David Racero, now one of the most prominent figures of the Pacto in the lower house, wants the presidency. Bogotá rep. Katherine Miranda, a petrista Green (who didn’t vote in the runoff because she was abroad), announced her candidacy very soon after the election and received the support of the old Centro Esperanza parties and the Comunes (ex-FARC).
The other parties don’t want the Pacto to hold the presidencies of both houses and monopolize power, so they’re likely to support the Liberals for the presidency of the House. The Liberals have been demanding it, and with the party now officially joining the governing coalition, they’ll likely get it.
There are five Liberal candidates for the presidency of the House: Jezmi Barraza (Atlántico), Julián Peinado (Antioquia), Carlos Ardila (Putumayo), Álvaro Monedero (Valle) and Andrés Calle (Córdoba). Barraza, who was supported by corrupt former senator Eduardo Pulgar, won the most votes of any Liberal candidate for the House anywhere (90,000). Semana claims that Monedero is the favourite.
Only Calle is a petrista, having been one of the first Liberal congressmen to support Petro during the campaign. The others, particularly Peinado, are closer to party leader César Gaviria and did not support Petro in the election. Calle says that he wants to help support the new government’s agenda while others say they’d be objective in their role and guarantors of all members’ rights — although this doesn’t mean that they’d be hostile to the government.
Other news
Petro’s early foreign policy shifts
Shortly after his election, Petro talked on the phone with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro (who is not officially recognized by Colombia as Venezuela’s legitimate president). Petro announced that the border with Venezuela would be reopened. The border has largely closed to vehicles and merchandise since Venezuela unilaterally closed the border in 2019. On his end, Maduro tweeted that he congratulated Petro on his victory and mentioned his willingness to “restore normality on the borders”. During the election, Petro, like most candidates, said he would reestablish diplomatic relations with Venezuela. Relations have been frozen since 2019 and the Venezuelan presidential crisis and ‘Venezuela Aid Live’ concert at the border, and Duque never appointed an ambassador in Caracas.
On June 21, just two days after his victory, Petro had a phone call with US President Joe Biden. Most noted that Duque had to wait for 5 months after Biden’s inauguration to get a call (and only got a bilateral meeting in Washington in March), after Biden ‘froze out’ the Colombian government in payback for its implicit support for Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
Petro also received congratulatory messages from Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, among others.
Early honeymoon for Petro
Petro is getting a political honeymoon after his election. In the first Invamer poll (a regular poll in five major cities conducted since 1994) since his victory, Petro’s favourability has surged to 64% (+22 since February) while his unfavourable numbers have collapsed to 22% (-18). Petro’s conciliatory and cautious first steps, with his calls for national unity around his ‘great national agreement’, have clearly been welcomed by voters and a lot are giving him the benefit of the doubt in his early days. It’s noteworthy that several people who had, for years and through this election, held unfavourable opinions of him have changed their mind since June 19.
Notably, Iván Duque didn’t have much of a honeymoon period in 2018. According to the same poll, he only had a 40% approval in August 2018.
The poll also reveals other interesting details about the post-electoral mood, which could be described as one of cautious optimism and renewed faith in democracy.
The percentage of those saying that the state of the country is improving is up 14 points to 23%, the highest since early 2021 (pre-protests).
47% say that there are guarantees for democratic opposition in Colombia, up 17 points from earlier this year and the highest since 2019. Trust in nearly all institutions (JEP, ConCourt, Bank of the Republic, Fiscalía etc.) is up. Even Iván Duque’s approval rating went up a bit, to 27%.
On questions asking whether certain policy issues are improving or worsening, on several of them, particularly those fields in which Petro has promised major changes (poverty, healthcare, agriculture, education, foreign policy, land reform, peace), there’s been a notable uptick in people saying that those issues are ‘improving’ — likely a reflection of the high expectations Petro is facing. For example, on peace, 35% think that the implementation of the peace agreement with the FARC is going in the right direction, the highest since 2018. Only 34% support Duque’s decision to suspend peace talks with the ELN. 67% now agree that the government will be able to restitute land to peasants displaced by the conflict.
Ironically, just as Petro — who for years was branded as the castrochavista who would turn Colombia into Venezuela — is about to take office, the percentage who say that Colombia could be in the same situation as Venezuela in the short-term has fallen from 60% to 45%. Final proof, if it was needed, that the old castrochavista boogeyman didn’t work in 2022.
Curiously, positive views of businessmen are up significantly (from 49% to 62%) and agreement with liberal economic policies is also up (67% support signing free trade agreements with many countries and 66% support promoting foreign investment and multinational corporations).
While Petro gets a honeymoon, his two main opponents in the election got more unpopular. Rodolfo Hernández has 52% unfavourable opinions and 28% favourable opinions. Federico Gutiérrez is seen unfavourably by 45% and favourably by 29%. The poll did not ask for Álvaro Uribe’s popularity.
One group clearly came out of the election looking pretty bad: the media. Unfavourable opinions of the media are up to 62%, the highest they have been since the 2021 protests. The media as a whole has been roundly criticized for their election coverage, with a lot of sensationalism and thinly-veiled editorializing and too little investigative journalism or quality analysis of policy debates and candidates’ qualities/flaws.
A recent poll by Datexco also showed a strong honeymoon for Petro, who surged to 63% favourable opinions. In that poll, 50% said Colombia was going in the right direction, up from only 15% in February.
The truth of the conflict
The Truth Commission (Comisión de la Verdad), created by the 2016 peace agreement, presented its long anticipated final report on June 28. The first volume presented, with its main findings and recommendations, is 896 pages long.
The report was unveiled at a ceremony in Bogotá, led by the commission’s president, father Francisco de Roux, a Jesuit priest. President Iván Duque was absent, on a visit to Portugal to attend the UN oceans conference and to receive a prize from National Geographic. Obviously, his absence at such an important event was criticized and reflects Duque’s views on peace and the conflict. Duque’s name was booed by the audience when de Roux announced that he had not accepted the invitation to attend.
President-elect Gustavo Petro, and Vice President-elect Francia Márquez, were in attendance and warmly welcomed by the audience. Petro agrees with the conclusions of the commission and has promised to implement its recommendations, even though they are non-binding.
The conclusions of the commission are not surprising to those who have studied the Colombian conflict, although they are still controversial for some and politically sensitive.
La Silla Vacía summarized the main recommendations here and the five most ‘‘uncomfortable’’ conclusions. Notably, the commission’s report is critical of the counter-insurgency and ‘internal enemy’ security model, which has remained quite similar since the late 1970s, arguing that it has only served to generate violence. This conclusion has been rejected out of hand by the right and the Minister of Defence, as well as the only ex-military commissioner (who resigned in May). Right-wingers have falsely claimed that the commission’s report blames the state for the violence rather than the “true criminals”, the guerrilla groups. The commission also concluded that drug trafficking prolonged the conflict and increased violence in rural areas, that paramilitarism was a project with political and economic interests that sought to defend the privileges of the ‘establishment’, that impunity allowed the conflict to persist, that Colombian democracy (“the oldest in Latin America” as often said) has been more violent and deadly than the South American dictatorships and that guerrillas committed serious human rights violations and war crimes against the civilian population it ostensibly ‘defended’.
Civilians have been the main victims of the conflict, and all parties have been responsible for human rights violations and deaths during the conflict: the state, paramilitaries, the guerrillas, political and economic elites and criminal groups (although paramilitaries alone were responsible for 45% of deaths in the conflict).
The commission’s main recommendations include:
- Fully implementing the 2016 peace agreement, opening peace negotiations with other armed groups (ELN, surrender and dismantlement of criminal groups) and providing reparations to all victims
- Expanding democracy and protecting the right to protest, notably by passing the political-electoral reform stipulated by the peace agreement but never passed.
- Ending the prohibitionist “war on drugs” and move towards the legal regulation of drugs
- Changing the election system for the attorney general (elected by the Supreme Court from a list of three candidates nominated by the President) to strengthen judicial independence and limiting extradition to reduce impunity.
- Changing the security policy and reform the police and military. The new security model should be focused on peace and human security. It recommends transferring the Police from the Ministry of Defence to a new peace ministry, as well as gradually eliminating conscription. Petro promised to do both in his campaign already.
- Accelerating the rural (agrarian) reform.
- Education for peace to gradually change mentalities.
The truth commission’s report is not meant to offer a single historical truth about the conflict, and it will be a subject of much debate, both politically and more academically. However, its conclusions and recommendations, welcomed by Colombia’s first left-wing president, weaken the old uribista (right-wing) vision of the conflict (premised in large part on the claim that there is no internal conflict, but only a ‘terrorist threat’ against a legitimate democratic state). The commission’s report and its main recommendations are boost and strong justification for Petro’s own peace and security policies, which include peace negotiations with the ELN and the full implementation of the 2016 peace agreement including its more transformational chapters (rural reform, political reform, security model).
Thanks for reading this first politics digest. See you in a few weeks!
