A Colombian flag in the wind. File photo.
By Luis Alfonso Mena S. – Apr 28, 2023
Analysis of the changes in President Petro’s cabinet
Several of the keys to the changes made this Wednesday, April 26, by President Gustavo Petro to his government cabinet are also found in different scenarios, such as his speech before the campesino communities of Zarzal (Valle del Cauca), decisions of Congress of the Republic over land, and in the recalcitrant boycotts by the heads of the old regime’s parties against social reforms.
In his devastating speech on April 25, in Zarzal, a municipality where he handed over a thousand hectares of fertile land from the La Calera property, administered by the SAE [Colombia’s Special Assets Society], to 90 peasant families, the president denounced, first of all, decisions taken in Congress that violate land policy and demonstrate the power of the landowners in that institution.
“Why did the Congress of the Republic, in its economic commissions, remove the article that allowed land to be purchased without expropriating it, minister [of agriculture, Cecilia López], in order to hand it over to the Colombian peasantry?” asked the president, referring to the process of the Development Plan. “Now, only one article remains in force in the law and that is that it must be expropriated. The same Congress of Colombia removes the article that allowed a smooth, peaceful negotiation, and obliges, if the Peace Agreement is to be fulfilled, to expropriate those who have land, the landowners. I do not understand if the Colombian Congress wants war.”
Secondly, in Zarzal, President Petro vehemently rejected the faction of the parties of the establishment which stands against the Health Reform, regarding a pronouncement to that effect issued by former President Juan Manuel Santos, whom Petro did not hesitate to describe as a liar when Santos said that the health care system current situation “is one of the best in the world”—all of which is indicative of the rocky future of the project in the legislative chambers.
“They believe that by taking their children to the Santa Fe Foundation, in the north of Bogotá, they have the best health system,” said Petro, addressing Santos. “They do not know what happens to a child here on a ranch, next to this farm, if they get sick. And then they go saying that they have the best health system in the world because they have not left the streets of Chapinero, or they have not been able to understand what peace really consists of.”
Third and most importantly, the head of state spoke of the necessity of having a team of collaborators with his full confidence, deeply committed to his policies. For this reason, he announced an “emergency government” with officials who “work day and night” for change and who “do not simply earn a salary or commissions.” “We can’t wait any longer,” the president told the community gathered in Zarzal.
“The government must now declare an emergency,” President Petro said. “Emergency means that day and night, government teams are working on how to lower the price of food, on how to deliver land to the peasantry, on how to have more food planted and, therefore, lower prices. Anyone who is no longer capable of doing this no longer has a place in our government.”
The Colombian people need, added Petro, “an emergency government that has officials whose hearts are in favor of humble people and not simply earning a salary and commissions, and who are capable of overcoming the enormous challenges that are demanded of us in the rural countryside. We cannot wait any longer.”
Centrism is coming to an end
In this way, most of these changes express that the stage of the presence, in the cabinet, of liberal and centrist characters who operate only from the ministerial offices is beginning to come to an end. This change was seen in the retirement of Alejandro Gaviria (neoliberal, in the Ministry of Educación), which occurred two months ago, on February 27, and by the departures of José Antonio Ocampo (Samperista, at the Treasury), Alfonso Prada (Santista, in the Ministry of Interior) and Cecilia López (social democrat, in the Ministry of Agriculture), changes oriented, in principle, to deactivate the extreme right with so-called tranquilizers of the market, which have already completed their cycle.
Like Alejandro Gaviria, who had become outspoken against the Health Reform from the government itself, Cecilia López also attacked the project and the energy transition policy. As a result, the expected results in the presidential task of advance in the Agrarian Reform and in the delivery of land to the peasants were not met.
For his part, José Antonio Ocampo was relentless with his militant position on the so-called fiscal rule, which curbs public spending on social programs, and Alfonso Prada, Gustavo Petro’s squire in the campaign, followed the position of his boss, Juan Manuel Santos, against the Health Reform and its lack of results regarding its processing in Congress, as responsible for the political portfolio and the relationship with the Legislature.
In addition, in line with the declaration issued by the president of the end of the “government coalition” with the Conservative, Liberal and U parties, two more of their representatives left the cabinet: Sandra Milena Urrutia (from the U, in the Ministry of Information Technologies, and Communications) and Guillermo Reyes (Conservative, in the Ministry of Transportation).
Sandra Milena Urrutia’s permanence was unsustainable since, in addition to being a bureaucratized official, she was the spokesperson for Dilian Francisca Toro, who recommended her on behalf of the Partido de la U, a group in which Toro applies dictatorial discipline to her congresspersons to force them to vote against the Health Reform, the same as César Gaviria, in the Liberal Party, and Efraín Cepeda, in the Conservative Party.
Regarding the departure of Guillermo Reyes, a member of the Conservative Party, not only the rupture of the coalition that he formed a part of should be considered, but also the strong objections that have been made to him in recent weeks due to his performance in the face of the crisis of the two “low”-cost airlines that did so much damage to tourism and flyers during Holy Week, a fact that was used by the extreme right to generate another criticism against the government.
Arturo Luis Luna, minister of science, was also removed, since his performance was inconsequential and bland, which shows that youth and a resume with many titles are not enough, factors that led Gustavo Petro to appoint him.
The surprise transfer, carried out by the president, of Mauricio Lizcano (of the Gente en Marcha [People on the Move] party) from the Administrative Department of the Presidency of the Republic (DAPRE) to the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications, was surely executed to take advantage of his knowledge in new technologies. Lizcano will have to clarify questions of a different order that have been asked of him for months.
Carolina, in the heart of the people
The unexpected event of this turn was constituted by the departure of Carolina Corcho from the cabinet, since she had gambled thoroughly for the Health Reform. All the leaders of the right-wing parties filed their grievances against her and, insatiable as ever, were not appeased by any of the points on which the Government conceded on the project.
She always received the support of the president, who insisted that she represented the thinking of the government and, therefore, no one imagined that she could be left out of it.
Perhaps in these more than eight months in office there has not been a Government of Change official who has been more attacked and vilified by health businessmen and by multiple business and media sectors than Carolina Corcho, who stoically fought to carry out the core reform of Petro’s mandate.
Surely, the president withdrew the minister to attempt to save the reform, a risky decision that, hopefully, will not be costly and that, from our point of view, is unfortunate, as was the withdrawal, on February 27, of Minister of Culture Patricia Ariza, whose departure was never explained by the president.
It is difficult to find a professional such as Ariza who is so competent and knowledgeable of the entire complex legal framework of the Colombian health system and who is an adequately determined fighter to push forward a law that would put an end to the health disaster produced by certain individuals who manage the multi-million dollar investments of the state in leeches such as EPS (Health Promoting Entities).
Carolina Corcho laid the foundations of the Health Reform, defended it with intelligence and courage, faced the merchants of the system and left the cabinet as one of its best ministers, loyal not only to the Government of Change, but to the struggles and rights of the Colombian people. This extraordinary fighter for humanity deserves admiration and recognition.
The Colombian popular movement values Carolina Corcho and Patricia Ariza and will always take their efforts and persistence into account. They remain in the heart of the people.
The challenges for the newcomers
The doctor Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo, former governor of Tolima and colleague of the president when Petro served as Mayor of Bogotá, as the new Minister of Health, awaits the challenge of carrying out the Reform in Congress. The designation takes him out of the race for the Bogotá Mayor’s Office and clears the way for the endorsement, by the Historical Pact, of a figure such as Gustavo Bolívar.
Replacing José Antonio Ocampo, the prominent economist Ricardo Bonilla, current director of the Territorial Development Fund, FinDeTer, and a man who has the full confidence of the President, will take office at the Ministry of Finance. His contribution will be very important to the financial support of the social reforms; the obsession of their adversaries, as well as the enormous deficit left by the Iván Duque regime in relation to the Stabilization Fund, will be dealt with. Fuel prices and the fight against inflation constitute particularly important areas.
Luis Fernando Velasco, a liberal leader with extensive parliamentary experience and a strong critic of César Gaviria, will assume the Ministry of the Interior. He could revitalize the approach to the social reform projects of a significant number of congressmen who rebelled (18 in total) and wrote a letter to the head of their party in which they rejected the threats made by the former neoliberal president to those who voted in favor of the Health Reform. Velasco is currently a presidential adviser for the Regions.
The new Minister of Agriculture is the lawyer Jennifer Mojica Flórez, current director of Ethnic Affairs of the Land Restitution Unit. She was deputy director of the Colombian Association of Jurists and has been part of processes such as the Association of Arhuaco Authorities of the Sierra Nevada and the Commission for the Clarification of the Truth. Her great challenges are promoting agrarian reform, contributing to improving food production, and fighting to lower prices.
Engineer William Camargo, current director of the National Infrastructure Agency, arrives at the Ministry of Transportation. He is an expert in urban planning and mobility systems. Among his challenges are finding solutions to the mess with Ultra Air and Viva and, more strategically, developing a comprehensive policy for tertiary roads that facilitates the mobilization of campesinos/as and their crops throughout the country.
Anthropologist Yesenia Olaya Requene, a native of Tumaco, Nariño, replaces Arturo Luis Luna in the Ministry of Sciences. She is vice minister of talent and social appropriation of knowledge of the Ministry of Science. She faces great challenges in an organization that has not yet taken off under the current government and in which Gustavo Petro has sown expectations due to the importance he attaches to scientific research as a motor for the development of communities and the country.
Although he is trusted by the president, Mauricio Lizcano is not the official that a ministry of such importance to the government, such as communications, requires, especially after taking into account his passage through DAPRE, which reveals the lack of a global strategy by the president with respect to media such as the radio and television, as it focuses on digital media and on achieving the expansion of the internet to rural areas of the country.
Lawyer and political scientist, specializing in the environment, Carlos Ramón González will be the new director of DAPRE. He is another man who is fully trusted by the president. González was director of Alianza Democrática M-19 and recently served as co-president of the Alianza Verde party. Through his office and that of the Chief of Staff, Laura Sarabia, he has passed through all the structures in the Casa de Nariño and the presidential agenda.
Those who remain
The Minister of Labor Gloria Inés Ramírez, the Minister of Mines and Energy Irene Vélez Torres, and the Minister of the Environment Susana Muhamad are some of those who will continue to serve. The right-wing media and politicians who have always had Minister Vélez in their sights were left with this fact. They even subjected her to motions of censure in Congress, from which she has emerged unscathed.
Two other ministers against whom the extreme right-wing Uribista and Cambio Radical [“Radical Change”] factions have called for motions of no confidence in Congress also remain unscathed: the foreign minister, Álvaro Leyva Durán, and the defense minister, Iván Velásquez Gómez. The latter, the same day of a sharp turn made in the cabinet, appeared before Congress to answer for absurd, malicious accusations from the opposition, as also happened a few days ago with the minister of foreign affairs.
Although of liberal origin, the ministers of justice, Néstor Iván Osuna; that of housing, Catalina Velasco; and that of commerce and industry, Germán Umaña, are now spoken of by analysts as “the points of tension” in the cabinet.
The recently appointed ministers of education, Aurora Vergara Figueroa, and of sports, Astrid Bibiana Rodríguez, who replaced Alejandro Gaviria and María Isabel Urrutia, respectively, in the February 27 changes, continue in their positions.
Finally, it was surprising that in the tremor of April 26, Ignacio Zorro was also not appointed minister of culture, to succeed Patricia Ariza, but continues under the title of manager.
The long-awaited appointment of the manager of RTVC Public Media Systems, a key entity in government communication matters, which is still in the hands of officials who remain from the right-wing regime of Iván Duque, did not take place either, an attitude strongly questioned by the alternative media and by the country’s progressive opinion, which sees how the president is wasting the opportunity to wield this network that could help counter the disinformation campaign of the hegemonic media and the press of the oligarchic system.
The Government of Change thus enters a new phase, without representatives of the right-wing parties that were part of the coalition until Tuesday, April 26, alongside the Historical Pact, the Green Alliance, and the Comunes (Commons) parties.
This shift to the left will make it possible to more clearly define the profile of the government and guide it along the path of real change. Everything also depends on the mobilization in the streets and sidewalks of workers, campesinos, and the middle classes, as President Gustavo Petro has proposed.
On May 1, 2023 there will be a new litmus test, during which the people hope to see their ministers parading with them in the streets, commemorating the International Day of the Working Class and supporting social reforms in motion.
(Telesur)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/KW/SL
