The Crossroads of Gustavo Petro’s Presidency

The Fall of a Pragmatist

There was a time when Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia, silenced many critics. He had just managed to get over 11 million Colombians to vote for him, shattering myths or truths such as Colombia being a right-wing country and him, a communist guerrilla, wanting to turn the country into Venezuela. On the day he was sworn in as president, some who had never supported him decided to give this man they had always repudiated the benefit of the doubt. It was an August afternoon, and the politician, with airs of a romantic philosopher and his sparse hair disheveled by the wind, spoke of unity, peace, an open-door government, and his eagerness to listen to everyone. He appointed centrist and liberal-leaning ministers and agreed on a consensus majority in Congress with right-wing parties. The country, which had never had a left-wing president, surrendered to the idea of change. This was a pragmatic Petro, almost a statesman. He had locked away his dreamer self, the one who had spent years designing the country he wanted in his head, and things went well at first. Until the old Petro tore his own seams and devoured the new one, tired of negotiating with other parties and seeing his social reforms reduced. It would be done his way or not at all. And he decided to break with everyone.

A Presidency on the Brink

The president does not want a half-hearted change. He wants his health reform, his pension reform, and his labor reform as he put them down on paper. He refuses to play the game of politics that his numbers force him into. He won the elections, but he does not have a majority in the Chamber or the Senate and needs to reach agreements to move projects forward. The initial Petro seemed to understand this. He relied on old political foxes, not necessarily of his ideological stripe, to first win the elections and then consolidate a stable majority. But these figures have been fading for various reasons, leaving the president more alone than ever. With laws under his arm that he feels are written in stone, but that dissolve in a Congress without support until they become nothing. This is how the first legislature of his government has closed, with a last semester in blank that forces to start from scratch in July.

The Rapid Decline

Along the way of these 11 months, the president has squandered a lot, very quickly. Including unexpected popularity quotas in the first months. He managed to pass the most progressive tax reform in the country’s history in record time and with a very large majority, hand in hand with the respected José Antonio Ocampo, today already out of the Government like the other moderate heads of the cabinet. He asked the Prosecutor’s Office to investigate his eldest son for an alleged case of corruption. He lost his right hand and the brain behind his agenda, Laura Sarabia, due to an apparently domestic case that ended up escalating into the biggest political crisis so far. He found himself defending his Government from that against which he had always fought: illegal interceptions, polygraphs, briefcases with cash. He had to fire his «brother» and campaign manager, Armando Benedetti, who, drunk with alcohol, jealousy, and anger at feeling politically displaced, starred in scandalous audios in which he talks about illegal financing during the campaign amid attacks and insults to Sarabia. And he had to abandon his initial plan to approve the bulk of the reforms in the first year.

The Awakening of the Opposition

The slowdown of the Government has been taken advantage of by the opposition, which is experiencing an awakening after years of free fall. The Government of Iván Duque had already squandered part of the strength of the right,which in the elections did not even manage to place a candidate in the second round, but Petro’s victory, mainly supported by young people, ended up sinking the conservative parties. Now they are beginning to breathe again, taking the form of street marches in which the crises of the Government find an amplified echo. Polarization and uncertainty are once again the protagonists while the country waits for Petro to set the course for his next year in office.