Colombian Politics Digest VI: 'National agreement', finally?
Petro meets with business magnates and Álvaro Uribe and gets his healthcare reform over a major hurdle, all while getting into a fight with the courts and a junior coalition partner.
After a long break, my Colombian Politics Digest is back, providing a summary of the main happenings in Colombian politics over the past weeks.
After the Pacto Histórico’s setback in the Oct. 29 local elections, President Gustavo Petro has sent signals that he’s open to dialogue and may actually finally be serious about the ‘national agreement’ (acuerdo nacional) that has been talked about on and off since last summer. On the other hand, the ‘national agreement’ will be on his terms, and the government is not really showing any signs of changing its political direction. The first dialogues took place just as Petro and the administration confronted the high courts and a restless junior coalition partner. Meanwhile, the government finally got the healthcare reform passed in second debate in the House, a small victory that came at a huge political cost and which is far from guaranteeing a total victory in the end.
A meeting with the top business magnates
On November 21, Petro met some of the biggest and wealthiest businessmen in the country, with the intention to extend an olive branch and tone down the confrontation with big business, after Petro referred to them as oligarchs and slaveowners. The dozen or so guests for for lunch in Cartagena, at the exclusive presidential guesthouse (Casa de Huéspedes Ilustres), came from fewer than ten leading business families/groups. The guests included:
Colombia’s richest man, Luis Carlos Sarmiento, and his son, from the Grupo Aval, one of the biggest financial groups in Colombia and Central America, owning several major Colombian banks, and owners of El Tiempo since 2012.
Alejandro Santo Domingo and others from Valorem, which includes El Espectador, Caracol TV, Blu Radio, Cine Colombia and D1 (a chain of hard discount stores).
Carlos Julio Ardila, president of the Organización Ardila Lülle, which owns RCN TV, soft drinks giant Postobón and sugar refineries, among others.
Harold Eder, president of Manuelita, an agroindustrial corporation, and brother of the mayor-elect of Cali.
Other invitees were Carlos Enrique Cavelier (Alquería, a dairy company), Pedro Carvajal (Carvajal Group), César Caicedo (Colombina, a big food company) and the children of Eduardo Pacheco (Colpatria).
Absent from the meeting were Jaime and Gabriel Gilinski, owners of Nutresa, Banco GNB Sudameris and right-wing Semana magazine (who were invited but declined), anyone from the Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño (GEA, Antioquia’s business elites) and the Char family (prominent opposition politicians and business magnates).
According to the statement released afterwards, they discussed shared priorities like education, economic productivity, territorial inclusion, peace, the environment and the development of the ‘popular economy’. According to La Silla Vacía, the lunch meeting was friendly and cordial, with no real points of discord and with a host willing to listen. It appears that the businessmen mostly discussed projects of interest to them that can tie in with the government’s priorities, like education, increasing economic productivity and regional development. They didn’t discuss issues where they likely have strong disagreements, like the healthcare reform and the labour reform (try two). Petro presented the meeting as part of the first steps for the ‘national agreement’ that he’s proposed since his election.
From the outside, the meeting raised suspicions, criticisms and questions. The traditional gremios (sectoral associations and lobbies), accustomed to significant sway and influence over economic decision-making, saw Petro’s meeting with the top businessmen with suspicion, feeling that he’s trying to circumvent them and cut them out as the state’s usual intermediaries on economic policy. Petro has had tense relations with the gremios, particularly because of his social reforms and anti-neoliberal ideological vision. The gremios, like the ANDI (the main private sector business association), SAC (the big landowners’ association) and Fenalco (the association of merchants and traders), argue that they’re more representative of the business world than the ten or so wealthiest business magnates. Fenalco’s president said that they didn’t represent the 2 million businessmen in the country, pointing out that 97% of companies are SMEs.
While Petro may want to go around the gremios, the exclusive meeting with the ‘wealthiest men’ is in keeping with Petro and the Colombian left’s (somewhat outdated) view that real power is held by the top economic elites. Petro and his allies have often repeated that while in 2022 they won government, they didn’t win power.
The opposition concocted theories that Petro, unpopular and with his agenda floundering in Congress, was looking to the business tycoons for some oxygen. It’s clear that Petro sees the ‘national agreement’ as a way to recover lost ‘governability’ and gain support for his policy agenda, but the wealthiest business tycoons in the country don’t really have the power to force approval of Petro’s reforms in Congress (nor is it in their interests).
The importance of this meeting shouldn’t be blown out of proportion. It’s likely that the businessmen attended out of courtesy—nobody would turn down an invitation from the president—and their attendance obviously doesn’t entail any commitments with Petro.
The meeting did confirm the forceful comeback of Laura Sarabia, now director of the Department of Social Prosperity (DPS). Sarabia was Petro’s former powerful and trusted former chief of staff and was forced to resign that job in June following the nanny and wiretaps scandal, but despite that scandal (and its ongoing judicial investigations), she never lost Petro’s full trust and confidence and has returned in force to the president’s inner circle. Sarabia helped put together and facilitate the meeting, along with Juan Fernández, the president’s business advisor, and both have been tasked with following up on the outcomes of the meeting.
A meeting with Álvaro Uribe
On November 22, Petro sat down with former President Álvaro Uribe, the spiritual leader of the Centro Democrático (CD), to discuss the healthcare reform. It’s their fourth meeting since Petro’s election, and a sign that while their parties are in constant confrontation, Petro and Uribe themselves maintain direct communications and a sort of tacit non-aggression pact.
The meeting itself, as expected, didn’t accomplish anything: the healthcare reform wasn’t withdrawn (as uribismo demanded), nor did uribismo stop its filibuster/delay tactics in Congress against the reform. Petro’s comments after the meeting emphasized the select few points of agreement between them. However, the communication channel between the two remains open. Petro considers Uribe his most distinguished political opponent. He can use his meetings with uribismo to feed the narrative of a ‘national agreement’ with all political forces—even though he hasn’t extended the same courtesy of direct meetings to the leaders of other parties, like César Gaviria (Liberal) and Efraín Cepeda (Conservative), or even the other major opposition party (Cambio Radical). Uribe needs Petro as he is set to go on trial in the witness tampering case, after the Superior Tribunal of Bogotá rejected the Attorney General’s office (Fiscalía)’s third attempt to close the case, and as he faces new accusations of complicity in the 1997 El Aro massacre following claims made by former paramilitary commander Salvatore Mancuso. The new attorney general that’ll take office next year, elected from a list of three names sent by Petro, will be the one who will take over Uribe’s cases.
Petro’s meeting with Uribe made clear that while Petro is open to a ‘national agreement’, he wants it to be on his terms and is unwilling to make major concessions.
The healthcare reform wins a battle
After six months, the plenary of the House finally passed the government’s healthcare reform in second debate on December 5. The reform moves on to the Senate next year.
The healthcare reform has become a point of honour for the government, even though it’s unpopular and faces an uncertain fate in the Senate or the Constitutional Court (if adopted). This hard-fought victory came at a huge political cost for the government: it cost health minister Carolina Corcho her job, it precipitated the explosion of the governing coalition in late April, and it consumed much of whatever political capital the government had left, at the expense of the two other major social reforms it presented earlier this year (labour and pensions).
The healthcare reform was passed in first debate in the seventh commission of the House in May, and had been stuck in the plenary of the House since the current session began in July. The government always had the votes to pass it in the House, with the support of the Pacto (27), its closest allies (16 victims’ seats, 5 Comunes), most of the Liberals (33) and La U (16) and some Greens (15), giving them between 90 and 100 votes. However, the opposition (CD, CR), joined by some Conservatives and Greens and helped by absences, were successful at delaying debate by breaking quorum—a majority of members (94) must be present for decisions to be adopted. However, the opposition never had the votes to kill the reform in the House.
Over the past six months, the reform tortuously made its way through the second debate. By early November, about half of the text had been approved. After the meeting with Uribe, the government was able to better align its forces, thwarting the opposition’s delaying tactics, and unblocked the debate. After November 28, the House approved several blocks of articles, including the most controversial (and important) parts of the reform like the transformation of EPS into gestoras de salud y vida, the new primary care centres (CAPS) as gateways to the system, the single-payer role of the ADRES (administrator of healthcare funds) and the transition to the new system.
On December 5, the government finally won the battle in the House. In two acts. First, it obtained the required majorities on two articles which are considered statutory articles and therefore require an absolute majority of members (94), rather than a simple majority of those present, to be adopted. Observers were skeptical that the governments had the votes on these articles, given that no other article of the bill had been adopted with over 94 votes. Yet, in a major win, it got 99 votes on those articles, with the support of the left (Pacto, Comunes), victims’ seats, most of the Liberals and La U and half of the Greens. The full text of the reform was adopted with 87 votes in favour and 37 against.
The government needed for the reform to pass second debate before the end of the current congressional session on December 16, so that it can be sent to the Senate for the final two debates next year (the next session begins on February 16) and it must be adopted before the end of the current legislative year (June 20 next year). The reform faces an uphill battle in the Senate, where the government’s support base is weaker and its majorities (if they exist) far more uncertain. While the government can count on substantial support from the Liberals and La U in the House, in the upper house, most of those two parties’ caucuses are more independent or anti-Petro. In addition, the reform benefited from having an ally as president of the House (the petrista Liberal Andrés Calle) who helped move it along in keeping with the government’s wishes, but it won’t get much help from Iván Name (Green), the president of the Senate, who is independent of the government and has criticized Petro’s attitude and disparaging comments.
In spite of these challenges, Petro has been unwilling to listen to criticism and heed warnings. A few days after his meeting with Uribe, Petro posted a very long tweet explaining his disagreements with the CD over the reform, notably that they want public money to be managed by private insurers (EPS) that Petro blames for bankrupting the system and ruining hospitals. Dismissing warnings that the reform, even if adopted, could be quashed by the Constitutional Court, Petro has made clear that he will keep insisting, vowing to present it again as many times as necessary making the corrections dictated by the court.
A fight with the courts
While Petro has been building his ‘national agreement’ with business magnates and opposition politicians, he’s run into conflict with the high courts after a number of Constitutional Court decisions against the government’s interests.
Most recently, on November 16, the Constitutional Court overturned the ban on deducting royalties from mining and oil companies’ taxable income, a provision included in Petro’s 2022 tax reform that had been expected to bring in 2.8 trillion pesos in tax revenues in 2024. The court ruled that the ban violated the principle of tax fairness, in part because royalties are a mandatory payment and not a discretionary expense and they do not increase their assets. 90 minutes after the court’s decision was announced, Petro tweeted that the finance minister would need to cut the budget of the three branches of government (to make up for the ‘lost’ 3 trillion pesos). In subsequent tweets, he said that the court’s decision “gifted tax revenues to oil and coal companies” and was an “expropriation of a national asset that de facto becomes a private asset.” Other government officials, as well as former finance minister José Antonio Ocampo (the architect of the tax reform), said they disagreed with the court’s argument. On top of the budgetary impact, the decision was a personal blow to Petro because it hits at the core of his anti-extractivist (and anti-oil and coal) vision.
Petro’s thinly veiled threat to cut the judiciary’s budget was seen as retaliation for the court’s decision. Fernando Castillo, the president of the Supreme Court, said that announcing a budget cut as a result of a high court’s decision was unacceptable.
The Constitutional Court has also struck down a state of emergency declared by Petro in La Guajira in July, and (so far) 10 of the 13 decrees issued during this state of emergency.
In early July, Petro declared a 30-day ‘state of economic, social and environmental emergency’ in La Guajira to address the humanitarian crisis and the effects of El Niño. A state of emergency (article 215 of the Constitution) allows the government to legislate by decree on matters directly and specifically related to the crisis at hand, subject to congressional oversight and judicial review.
The administration sought to use a real humanitarian crisis (malnutrition, infant mortality, limited access to drinking water and basic sanitation, extreme poverty, prolonged drought) in one of Colombia’s poorest departments to adopt, locally and via decree, key parts of its policy agenda that it hasn’t been able to get passed in Congress or has had trouble implementing. The government issued 13 decrees under the state of emergency, including a ‘pilot’ of its healthcare reform, energy transition and water management measures limiting new mining concessions, rural reform, an expansion of the government’s Renta Ciudadana (cash transfer) program and various tax measures.
On October 2, the Constitutional Court ruled that the state of emergency was unconstitutional. The court said that while there is a humanitarian crisis exacerbated by climatic phenomena like El Niño and climate change—since 2017, the court has considered that there exists an ‘unconstitutional state of affairs’ in La Guajira in relation to the rights of Wayúu indigenous children—the government must first exhaust all possible ordinary mechanisms to address the crisis before resorting to exceptional measures. The majority opinion (adopted 6-3) sent a clear message to the government that the climate crisis (among other crises) cannot be an excuse to adopt states of exception, which must remain the last resort when existing ordinary mechanisms are unsuitable or insufficient. Nevertheless, considering the severity of the humanitarian crisis exacerbated by water scarcity in current climate conditions, the court deferred for one year the effects of its ruling.
As a consequence of the court’s decision, all decrees issued under the state of emergency are all invalid. So far, the Constitutional Court has struck down ten decrees, but in limited cases it has deferred the unconstitutionality of certain decrees which are directly and specifically aimed at addressing the humanitarian crisis derived from water scarcity.
By and large, Petro and his administration have been less confrontational in their reactions to the court’s decision on La Guajira. Petro has said that he disagrees with but respects the court’s ruling and announced that the decrees would be presented as bills to Congress. He did, however, rhetorically ask ‘where will justice be?’ after the court, in early November, struck down a decree which would have created an additional contribution of 1,000 pesos on the electricity bills of wealthier residents.
Petro took a risky gamble with his state of emergency in La Guajira, testing the waters for an alternative to implement his policies by working around Congress, but was unambiguously struck down. He’s learned his lesson (kind of): to uribistas who told him that the preventive, primary care in his healthcare reform could be implemented by decree, he’s pointed to the Constitutional Court’s decisions on his decrees in La Guajira.
The Constitutional Court has reiterated its independence from the government, but not all of its rulings have gone against it. For example, just recently, the Constitutional Court upheld the 2022 ‘total peace law’ (with some conditions)—a big win for the government—and the tax reform’s new tax on single-use plastics and health taxes on sugary drinks.
Petro isn’t the first president to have disagreements with the court. All presidents have seen some of their key policy achievements and interests ruled unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court. Iván Duque, for example, criticized the Constitutional Court’s decision to decriminalize abortion in 2022 and a 2019 ruling which struck down a ban on consuming alcohol and drugs in public places. Álvaro Uribe spent much of his second term in open conflict with the Supreme Court.
Petro’s tense relations with the high courts comes just as the Supreme Court begins the process to elect the next attorney general, from a list (terna) of three women, with no clear implied favouritism from the president for any one candidate (unlike in previous elections).
The Greens: Coalition or independence?
The Greens (8 senators and 15 representatives) are an important junior coalition partner for the government in Congress, but the party is deeply divided about whether it should stay in the coalition or declare itself independent. This current debate is nothing new and has been brewing for several months, as several Green representatives and senators have been critical of the administration and some have questioned the party’s current status as a coalition party. But the debate has recently escalated to a new level—although the party has been unable to come to a decision about it.
In a media scrum after the meeting with Uribe, health minister Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo threw shade at the Greens, saying that they enjoy being in government with bureaucratic representation while being in opposition in Congress, obstructing the healthcare reform. Without naming them, Jaramillo said that the Greens must take a clear position, “either you’re with the government, or you’re in that opposition,” and that one cannot take advantage of the president’s ‘generosity’ and enjoying senior positions in government while being in opposition.
The Greens—at least those who felt targeted—were incensed by the minister’s comments. Representatives Catherine Juvinao and Katherine Miranda (Bogotá), the most vocal and visible critics of the healthcare reform in the House, called on the party to leave the coalition and declare themselves independent. Miranda challenged the minister to ‘remove everything that smells green from the government’ (which earned her a confusing early morning tweet from Petro), while Juvinao criticized the government’s sectarianism and dogmatism, complaining that she’s been permanently mistreated and slandered by Twitter trolls and Pacto congressmen. The Greens’ three co-presidents managed to put out a vague statement which said that Jaramillo was wrong if he thought that participation in government was a ‘bargaining chip’ in exchange for votes in Congress. But their statement confusingly stated that the Greens are a ‘government party’ with ‘open deliberation’ on bills before Congress and whose participation in governments is a ‘contribution to good government’.
In Europe, the idea that junior coalition partners represented in government should vote with the government in the legislature wouldn’t be controversial. However, in Colombia, parties are much weaker and coalitions are much more transactional, not defined by coalition agreements. Not all congressmen feel tied down by their parties’ members in government, particularly if they’re not ministers. Relations between governments and coalition allies are transactional, with quid pro quos, and a fair deal of blackmail and extortion.
The Greens largely supported Petro in 2022, either by the first round or in the runoff. Katherine Miranda, for example, supported Petro in the first round and was even one of his main campaign surrogates. After his election, the Greens didn’t get any ministries but did get several important government agencies—the ICETEX (with former rep. Mauricio Toro) and the SENA (with former senator Jorge Eduardo Londoño)—and, since May 2023, the Greens’ former co-president and powerful party apparatchik Carlos Ramón González is secretary-general of the presidency (head of the presidential office). However, in Congress, some Green senators and representatives have always tended to be more independent and often differed from the government on key pieces of legislation. Many Greens have also felt slighted or ignored by the administration, which has either taken their support for granted or expended more energy in wooing bigger traditional parties.
The healthcare reform has deepened the internal rift between petristas and independents in the Green caucus. Martha Jurado (Tolima), elected in coalition with the Pacto, has been one of the rapporteurs (ponentes) of the reform, and others like Olga Lucía Velásquez (Bogotá) and Santiago Osorio (Caldas) have been loyal to the government. Miranda and Juvinao, high-profile, very vocal and media-savvy congresswomen, have emerged as two of the leading critics of the healthcare reform, concerned about the high corruption risks in the new single-payer model. Others, like Risaralda’s Carolina Giraldo and Alejandro García or Cristian Avendaño (Santander), have also said that the party should quit the coalition.
In the Senate, the party is just as divided (as made clear with the election of the president of the Senate in July). The ‘YouTuber senator’ Jota Pe Hernández, who won the most votes of any Green candidate in 2022, is openly in opposition to Petro and is well to the right of the rest of the party. While some like Inti Asprilla (the most petrista), Ariel Ávila, Andrea Padilla and Carolina Espitia have tended to vote with the government, others like Angélica Lozano (the wife of outgoing Bogotá mayor Claudia López) have been more critical.
On November 27, the Green caucus and co-presidents met to discuss their relationship with the administration. Unsurprisingly, the divided party was again unable to come to a conclusion, and the final decision will be left up to the national leadership, a body of 40-odd members (national delegates and members of Congress), that shouldn’t meet until next year. The party once again put out a muddled, somewhat incoherent statement, reaffirming that they remain (for now) a government party but that this doesn’t mean that legislators need to vote ‘on their knees or with their heads bowed’.
Shortly after Jaramillo’s incendiary comments, interior minister Luis Fernando Velasco needed to do damage control, disavowing his colleague. Velasco said that Jaramillo’s comments “did not come out well” and that they weren’t the position of the government, that the government’s relation with the Greens and Congress has never been transactional. Velasco also made clear that he’s the one who is to manage political relations with Congress.
If the Greens were to declare themselves independent, under the terms of the 2018 opposition statute (Law 1909 of 2018), their bureaucratic ‘quotas’ would be in jeopardy. The law says that members of independent parties may not be appointed to government positions if they are or have been members of the party’s leadership (at any level) or candidates for elected office. The law isn’t clear if this would mean that those currently holding government positions would need to leave those jobs (a question that’d invariably end up in court) if their party changes their political declaration from government to independent.
A new peace commissioner, a new direction for ‘total peace’?
On November 22, Petro fired the High Commissioner for Peace, Danilo Rueda, by tweet, and announced that he would be replaced by Otty Patiño, hitherto chief negotiator with the ELN guerrilla.
The timing was a surprise, although most felt that Rueda’s days were probably counted, given the chaotic state of ‘total peace’.
Rueda has long been the target of intense criticism by both opponents and cautious supporters of the government’s ‘total peace’ policy—the ambitious goal to entirely end the conflict in Colombia by making peace or demobilization deals with all armed groups, including both guerrillas and criminal gangs. Rueda, a longtime human rights leader and experienced facilitator and interlocutor with armed groups, had micromanaged ‘total peace’, deciding the strategy and details (often through improvisation) and overseeing the different negotiation tables.
Over the past few weeks, the already shaky total peace had been dealt pretty serious blows that have raised existential questions. On October 28, Liverpool footballer Luis Díaz’s parents were kidnapped in Barrancas (La Guajira)—his mother was rescued within hours, but his father, ‘Mane’ Díaz, remained missing. The ELN admitted responsibility on November 2 and said Mane Díaz would be released, as the government’s negotiating team had demanded. However, the ELN deliberately took their sweet time to release him, and he was only freed on November 9. The ELN had delayed his release, blaming military operations in the area and forcing the army to reduce its military activities to facilitate the release. ‘Antonio García’, the hardline ELN commander-in-chief, said in a statement that it had been a “mistake” to kidnap Díaz’s father.
The kidnapping was a severe blow to the peace talks with the ELN, which restarted under the current administration last year. There has been a six-month bilateral ceasefire with the ELN since August 3. While this ceasefire has reduced the ELN’s offensive actions by 77% and combats by 43%, there have been 16 documented violations or non-compliance with the ceasefire, including 41 kidnappings, and the ELN’s conflict with the Clan del Golfo has continued.
The government considered Mane Díaz’s kidnapping a violation of the ceasefire protocols, which bans actions prohibited by protocol II of the Geneva Convention (which bans taking of hostages of civilians not party to the conflict). The ELN, in contrast, says that it never agreed to suspend kidnappings, a point reiterated by ‘Antonio García’ who wrote that nowhere did the ELN commit to not undertake ‘financing operations’ (i.e. kidnappings), claiming that these are the means by which they sustain themselves financially. He also claims that the ELN is a ‘poor’ guerrilla because it is not involved in drug trafficking (which is false), and places the burden on the government to discuss a solution to the ELN’s financial problems. More recently, García said that the ELN doesn’t carry out kidnappings but rather takes ‘prisoners and detainees’. I’m sure the ELN’s hostages will appreciate the difference!
The government set no ‘red lines’ in these negotiations (unlike Juan Manuel Santos), and this has now exploded in their face. Timidly, the government’s peace delegation has called on the ELN to end kidnappings and release hostages, although still without making this a sine qua non. The ELN has taken around 30 hostages this year. The total number of kidnappings this year is set to reach its highest level in a decade: 286 hostages were taken from January-October 2023, up 72% from the same period in 2022.
On November 5, the Estado Mayor Central (EMC) FARC dissident group led by ‘Iván Mordisco’ unilaterally suspended the peace negotiations with the government after tensions and incidents between them and the military in El Plateado (Cauca). The EMC, the largest federation of FARC dissidents and deserters, began peace talks with the government on October 8 and agreed to a three-month bilateral ceasefire from October 15. Following the suspension of talks, Petro tweeted that a ceasefire without negotiations is impossible.
These crises highlighted the flaws and disorganization in ‘total peace’, and how illegal armed groups have taken advantage of the government’s good intentions and disorganization to take everyone for a ride, raising questions about their actual willingness for peace.
Danilo Rueda was, at best, way out of his depth. He personally micromanaged the different negotiations, trying to be everywhere at once, and often acted alone without proper coordination with other government departments, most notably the defence ministry. Infamously, on October 27 a joint statement by both parties in the EMC peace talks announced that members of the government and EMC’s peace delegations would attend the official opening of the regional elections on October 29 and ‘accompany’ the election process in El Plateado. Petro needed to disavow this statement himself, stating that neither the peace commissioner nor the government had authorized the EMC to participate in any electoral events on October 29.
Rueda prioritized short-term measures to alleviate the humanitarian impact of the conflict in the regions over a long-term strategic vision of the direction of peace talks. The government has no clear idea of where it wants to go with these negotiation. Armed groups have taken advantage of this lack of clear long-term objectives to blackmail and deceive the government. For example, the ELN’s ‘Antonio García’ recently wrote that the ELN cannot be asked to disarm at this time, and the topic of demobilization and disarmament does not appear on the negotiation agenda with the ELN, raising a pretty big question: what’s the point of peace negotiations if the demobilization of an armed group isn’t on the agenda? With organized crime structures and gangs, the government can’t even offer them anything because there’s no legal framework for the surrender (sometimiento a la justicia) of these groups without political status
With total peace in crisis and under fire in Congress, Rueda’s position had been untenable, yet Petro still took everyone (including Patiño and Rueda) by surprise when he dismissed Rueda via social media. Petro decided to replace him with Otty Patiño.
Otty Patiño was a founding member of the M-19 guerrilla (to which Petro also belonged) and participated in the peace negotiations that led to the demobilization of the M-19 in 1990. With the AD M-19, he was a member of the 1991 constituent assembly. Patiño is a political scientist and expert in conflict resolution, and has written several books about the conflict, including about the ELN. He had been the government delegation’s chief negotiator with the ELN since October 2022. During the latest crisis in the peace process with ‘Mane’ Díaz’s kidnapping, Patiño stood out while Rueda waffled. Patiño’s role was decisive in facilitating Díaz’s release and he established a clear stance against kidnapping.
Patiño’s experience and standing likely brings a new direction for ‘total peace’—certainly in the style, but also in the substance and strategy. In any case, he has a very tough job ahead of him: resolving the current crises, putting order in the peace negotiations, saving ‘total peace’ and rebuilding public trust and support for it. In his early days, he’s repeated his strong stance against kidnapping (without making it a red line) and made clear that a peace process with the ELN ends with their disarmament.
The fifth cycle of negotiations with the ELN began in Mexico on December 4.
In other news
Hernán Penagos took office as the new National Registrar (registrador nacional) on December 5, after being chosen by the presidents of the three high courts. Penagos is a former Partido de la U representative from Caldas (2010-2018), former president of the House (2013-2014) and former magistrate of the National Electoral Council, CNE (2018-2022). The national registrar is selected by the presidents of the high courts following (in theory) a merit-based selection process. The selection process this year was controversial: the knowledge exam needed to be repeated after the system crashed during the exam, mistakes in a tenth of the questions and candidates padded their resumes with hastily-published books. Penagos beat out the favourites, former CNE magistrates Virgilio Amanza and José Joaquín Vives, thanks to his results in the least objective stage of the selection process, the closed-doors interview with the three presidents. Penagos will be responsible for organizing the 2026 elections and the implementation of the new electoral code (if given the green light by the Constitutional Court) adopted in June 2023,
During a Senate commission meeting on Nov. 29, health minister Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo claimed that anyone who received a COVID-19 vaccine, except for Sinovac, served for “biggest experiment in history” (as they were new technologies, referring to mRNA), that all vaccines entered Colombia “without authorization” (which is false: all vaccines used in Colombia were authorized by the local health regulator) and that “we cannot keep experimenting with the Colombian public.” His inaccurate comments were widely denounced as anti-vaxx and conspiratorial. Petro stepped in, tweeting that calling Jaramillo ‘anti-vaxx’ was “simply slanderous” and that he hadn’t lied. Nevertheless, Jaramillo needed to backtrack and ‘clarify’ his comments, writing that he has always been in favour of vaccination and that vaccines are safe and effective.
As if one controversy wasn’t enough, in another Senate commission meeting on December 6, Jaramillo argued that the triplication of ICU capacity during the COVID-19 pandemic was a ‘business’ and that no country needed to expand ICUs like Colombia (which is false). Jaramillo said that healthcare providers were paid on the basis of ICU beds made available, even if they were not occupied. His comments were, again, misleading or false. Again, his comments were also widely denounced by politicians and healthcare professionals. Some dug up old tweets from then-opposition senator Gustavo Petro who demanded more ICUs in 2020 and 2021.
Thanks for reading.