Colombian Politics Digest XI: China, scandals, arrests, addictions and more
A sumary of recent news: Petro in China, former presidents of the Senate & House arrested, the justice minister resigning and more.
I’m glad to bring back the ‘Colombian Politics Digest’, covering the latest developments in Colombian politics in this heated pre-electoral year.
In this edition: Petro visits China and Colombia joins China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the former presidents of the Senate and House are arrested, the justice minister resigns with a bang alleging political interference, Petro’s former foreign minister claims that Petro is a drug addict and the Constitutional Court has a new magistrate (Petro’s lawyer).
Check out my separate posts on the other big news in Colombian politics: Petro’s consulta popular rejected by the Senate and the labour reform:
Petro in China, Colombia in the BRI
President Gustavo Petro was in China from May 12 to 16 to attend the CELAC-China summit. In an interview from the Great Wall of China, Petro announced on May 12 that Colombia would join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Petro’s visit to China comes amidst domestic turbulences and tensions with Donald Trump.
China had invited Colombia to join the BRI last October, but Petro dithered and appeared hesitant to further deepen political and economic ties with China. His 2023 visit to China largely a waste, because Petro had bizarrely gone there insistent on talking to Xi Jinping about his stubborn demand for the Chinese-built Bogotá metro to be underground above all else (Petro allegedly sulked when he was informed beforehand that this would be inappropriate).
Trump’s return to power and the brief Trump-Petro crisis in late January have changed matters, with the old US-Colombia alliance strained. In April, Petro personally visited the Chinese ambassador in Bogotá. Earlier this month, foreign minister Laura Sarabia announced that she’d convene the foreign relations advisory commission (made up of congressmen and former presidents) to present a MOU about the BRI (this announcement apparently took the Chinese by surprise). However, within hours, Petro disavowed and reprimanded Sarabia (their relations have worsened over the last several months), affirming that he is the head of Colombia’s foreign relations. After Petro’s comments, the meeting of the advisory commission was cancelled. Sarabia still joined the trip to China, amidst speculation that her days are counted and that her influence is greatly diminished.
Petro’s visit to China is as president pro tempore of the CELAC, for the CELAC-China summit, also attended by Boric (Chile) and Lula (Brazil), but the government (chaotically) turned it into a working visit with a big delegation (six ministers) but without any clear agenda.
Colombia and China signed a ‘cooperation plan’ officializing Colombia’s adhesion to the BRI. The document isn’t a treaty and carries no legal obligations. According to the Colombian media, the document was negotiated and drafted by the commerce ministry, led by interim minister Cielo Rusinque (a diehard petrista), behind the back of the foreign ministry and without consultations with business groups. The plan envisions deeper cooperation beyond just infrastructure (the BRI’s usual focus) in fields including technological exchanges, reindustrialization, mobility and decarbonization. Petro drew up grandiose dreams of Colombia becoming the epicentre of a new connected humanity based on technology and knowledge, whatever that means. The Colombian government has defended joining the BRI as a move to strengthen Colombia’s presence in Asia without compromising its sovereignty or its traditional relations, boosting trade and investment opportunities.
Petro is taking a symbolic but important step in moving closer to China, at a time where relations with the US are very tense. Analysts say that Petro is playing with fire and risks further worsening bad relations with Trump. Mauricio Claver-Carone, Trump’s special envoy for Latin America, had warned that Petro’s rapprochement with China was a great opportunity for ‘Ecuadorian roses and Central American coffee’. Colombia’s reflexively pro-American business elite has been very critical of the BRI: Bruce MacMaster, the president of ANDI (the business association), warned of the negative effects it could have on the economy and added that it’s diplomatically ‘inappropriate’, Fenalco has called it an ‘unnecessary provocation’, the head of the Colombian-American Chamber of Commerce raised questions about the implications and others, inspired by Trump’s zero-sum ‘justifications’ for his tariffs have raised alarms about worsening Colombia’s big trade deficit with China. The first reaction from the Trump administration, the US said it’d move to block loans from the IDB to projects led by Chinese companies in Colombia and elsewhere. Petro shrugged off the threat, saying that he believed it right that the US doesn’t finance project they don’t consider their own, but others panicked.
The Economist found in a recent study that China’s popularity is rising in Colombia and elsewhere in South America. In the latest Invamer poll, favourable opinions of China shot up to a record high 62%, while positive views of the US are down to 40%.
Name and Calle arrested
On May 7, the investigation chamber of the Supreme Court ordered the arrests of Iván Name and Andrés Calle, respectively presidents of the Senate and the House in 2023-2024, for their implication in the UNGRD scandal, facing accusations of bribery and embezzlement.
The UNGRD scandal is the biggest corruption scandal to hit the administration, involving bribes paid out by the government to members of Congress in cash or through rigged contracts in the UNGRD, the emergency management agency. Olmedo López and Sneyder Pinilla, former director and subdirector of the UNGRD, said that Name received 3,000 million pesos ($715,000) and Calle received 1,000 million pesos ($237,000) in cash in October 2023, in exchange for facilitating passage of the government’s legislative agenda, particularly the healthcare reform (which ended up being defeated in the Senate in April 2024) and pension reform (adopted in June 2024). The money came from a contract with massive cost overruns to buy 40 water trucks in La Guajira. Pinilla gave the cash directly to Calle, while the cash was given to Name by a messenger, Sandra Ortíz, Petro’s presidential advisor for regions at the time. The order to buy off Name and Calle was reportedly given in September 2023 at a ‘conclave’ attended by then-interior minister Luis Fernando Velasco, the then-head of the presidential office (Dapre) Carlos Ramón González and other ministers. The money allegedly went to finance Name and Calle’s family members’ campaigns during the 2023 local elections.
Calle, a petrista Liberal, was among the first Liberals to support Petro’s candidacy in 2022, helped the government’s agenda in his time as president of the House. In contrast, Name’s unexpected election as president of the Senate in June 2023 was celebrated as a triumph by the opposition and as a blow to the government, which was backing his caucus rival, Angélica Lozano. As president of the Senate, he repeatedly clashed with Petro and criticized the government’s legislative agenda. However, behind the public facade, Name quietly helped the government’s pension reform at various key moments. According to La Silla Vacía, Name was absent from 8 of the 13 plenary sessions during which the pension reform was discussed, ceding power to the first vice president of the Senate, petrista senator María José Pizarro. The Constitutional Court, currently examining the constitutionality of the pension reform, has asked to review the evidence and testimonies in the UNGRD scandal. Several media outlets have speculated that this could be the ‘final blow’ to the pension reform in the Court.
In ordering the arrest of Name and Calle, the Supreme Court considered that there is testimonial evidence and serious indications that they may have committed the crimes under investigation. Name was arrested and Calle turned himself in, and both men have continued to insist in their innocence.
As usual when these sorts of things happen, both sides took glee in reminding how the other side was once friends with the guy who is now in jail. Petro denied that Name was bribed by the government, given that he was in opposition, and instead said that he stole from the government and the people. Petristas pointed out how the opposition effusively celebrated upon Name’s election as president of the Senate in June 2023. In contrast, Petro and his allies were conspicuously silent about Calle’s arrest. On the other hand, the opposition shared old pictures and videos of Petro campaigning with Calle in 2022. Beyond the selective outrage and purposeful omission of politicians, the arrests underline how the current administration, despite all its promises to the contrary, has replicated and perpetuated all the old corrupt, clientelistic political practices of the past.
On May 14, the Fiscalía announced that it would charge Carlos Ramón González with bribery, embezzlement and money laundering. González, who was director of the Dapre (2023-2024) and director of national intelligence (2024), is now the highest-ranking member of the administration to face criminal charges in the UNGRD scandal.
The justice minister resigns
On May 15, justice minister Ángela María Buitrago’s resignation was made public, effective June 1. In a letter dated April 12, but only made public now, Buitrago said she was resigning because of “attempts to interfere” in the ministry in recent weeks. In radio interviews, Buitrago said that interior minister Armando Benedetti and Angie Rodríguez, director of the Dapre, pressured her to appoint or dismiss people in the prisons service (USPEC) and other departments.
Specifically, in an interview with El Tiempo, Buitrago claimed that they had ordered her to immediately fire Ludwing Valero, the director of the USPEC, who was a ‘quota’ of Liberal senator Miguel Ángel Pinto (in retribution for Pinto voting to kill the labour reform in the seventh commission in March); and to replace the director of drug policy with someone who didn’t meet the requirements for the position.
From China, Petro claimed that he had asked for her resignation (Buitrago denied this), because of disagreements over peace policy, and that her claims were ‘not true’. Benedetti said he’d sue her for libel and slander, and then posted a video with the caption “they always hit the weakest dog” and the hashtag ‘el incomprendido’ (misunderstood). In a recent interview, Angie Rodríguez said that while she did call Buitrago but did so under orders from the president, who is free to choose people to fill positions in the government.
In his column in Cambio, Daniel Coronell revealed two others incidents of political interference. First, in April, a Pacto senator accompanied by the boss a Cuban state-owned biotechnology company approached her seeking authorization to export a controlled chemical. Buitrago said she couldn’t authorize it without the proper legal requirements. In spite of this, Angie Rodríguez raised the issue again. Second, in May, Buitrago was unwilling to sign an ‘unfavourable opinion’ against the extradition of alias ‘HH’, the commander of the Comuneros del Sur, a dissident faction of the ELN in peace talks with the government. She felt that the presidency wanted to force her to sign the document (that she has no power to sign) to give a judicial veneer to a political decision (the president has the final word on extradition requests).
Ángela María Buitrago had been minister of justice since July 2024, replacing Néstor Osuna. Buitrago, a criminal lawyer and former prosecutor, had been one of the three women on Petro’s shortlist for attorney general in 2023. In just under a year, Buitrago wasn’t able to leave a mark on her portfolio. In her resignation letter, she regretted not having been able to make much progress in addressing the prison crisis because of budget cuts. Buitrago had disagreed with Petro on legal matters of paz total and had a poor relationship with the peace commissioner, Otty Patiño. She had been working on providing a legal framework for peace talks and disarmament for illegal armed groups without a political status, but amidst disagreements with Petro and Patiño hadn’t produced anything.
Letters from Leyva
On April 22 and on May 5, Petro’s first foreign minister (2022-2024) Álvaro Leyva sent two public letters to Petro, claiming that the president is a drug addict.
In his first letter, Leyva said that he learned about Petro’s drug problem during a state visit to France in June 2023, when Petro “disappeared during two days in Paris.” Without proper explanation from the presidency, that trip was suddenly extended by two days, a mystery widely reported by the media at the time. In response to Leyva, Petro claimed that he visited museums and his family (two of his daughters, Andrea and Sofía, lived in Paris at the time), a claim backed up by Andrea as well as the ambassador to France, Alfonso Prada.
Two weeks later, Leyva struck again with another letter, detailing more examples of how Petro’s alleged drug addiction had led to his failure to fulfill his presidential duties during several foreign visits. In January 2023, Petro canceled a meeting with Tony Blair at the WEF in Davos. A few days earlier, during a state visit to Chile, he abruptly canceled a meeting with supreme court judges. On two occasions, Petro didn’t take phone calls with Turkish President Erdoğan that he himself had requested. In Petro’s first visit to China in October 2023, after being told that the Bogotá metro would be an inappropriate topic of conversation with Xi Jinping, Leyva claims that Petro ignored Xi during the state dinner and remained silent for two hours.
In his second letter, Leyva, saying that this personal tragedy was also a national tragedy, asked Petro to accept that he is sick and that it was “time to reconsider your presence in the presidency.”
Leyva, an octogenarian political figure with a fascinating career, was Petro’s first foreign minister, where his tenure was largely unimpressive. In January 2024, he was suspended from office for three months by the Procuraduria for irregularities in a bidding process for producing passports (a chaotic mess largely of his own making), becoming the first cabinet minister to be suspended from office (in November 2024, the Procuraduria found him guilty and disqualified him from public office for a decade). Petro initially defended Levya, insofar that his suspension served Petro’s old narrative of political persecution and victimization, but Petro slowly drifted away from Levya (who was replaced as foreign minister by a far more competent and effective figure, Luis Gilberto Murillo). Leyva nevertheless remained a loyal supporter of the president, defending a bizarre and refuted thesis that the 2016 peace agreement with the FARC agreement allowed Petro to convene a constituent assembly by decree. Earlier this year, Leyva began posting cryptic riddle-like messages on social media critical of Petro.
Petro’s private life has been the subject of intense speculation, rumors and conspiracy theories ever since he was mayor of Bogotá over a decade ago. Leyva’s letters connect Petro’s well-known impunctuality, cancellations and unexplained absences (in his first year, La Silla Vacía counted over 80 cancellations in his schedule) with an alleged drug problem. Leyva isn’t the first person to suggest that Petro is a drug addict: in 2023 Armando Benedetti, now interior minister, had implied that Petro (like him) uses cocaine and five months later, María Jimena Duzán, a prominent journalist, wrote an open letter asking Petro if he had a drug problem (Petro replied that his only addiction was to coffee in the morning). Leyva now affirms it as a fact that he’s witnessed firsthand. Of course, Petro’s alleged drug problem is not a proven fact and Leyva, in spite of his relative proximity to Petro, may not be the most credible source. Regardless, Petro’s behaviour in his private life raises fair questions about his handling of public affairs.
Leyva’s letters have largely served to confirm everyone’s preconceived ideas. The right-wing opposition, which now suddenly trusts Leyva as a credible source, has taken it as confirmation of their longstanding claims that Petro is a drug addict, a national tragedy and international embarrassment. Uribistas like senator María Fernanda Cabal and Christian Garcés have demanded that Petro undergo a toxicology and psychological exams or be evaluated by a medical board that’d decide if he’s fit to remain in office. Petrismo, on the other hand, have defended Petro’s private life and criticized Leyva, claiming that he was seeking attention. Petro himself largely brushed off the first letter, besides snide remarks against ‘the writer’ and a comment that he is ‘addicted to love’. However, he responded more angrily to the second letter, claiming that Leyva, a ‘decrepit old man’ resentful for having been kicked out of office by the Procuraduría, was part of an international plot to remove him from office along with Republican representative Mario Díaz-Balart.
Besides the drug issues, Leyva’s letters confirmed Petro’s aloof distance from his own cabinet ministers (he seldom meets with them privately, and imparts orders to them like a stern professor) and claimed that Petro is a ‘victim’ or hostage of Sarabia and Benedetti. Leyva isn’t the first one to ask questions about Sarabia and Benedetti, two of the most controversial figures of the administration: that was the main highlight of a trainwreck 6-hour cabinet meeting in February broadcast to the entire country. Nearly everyone is convinced that Benedetti is blackmailing Petro with the destructive information and deepest secrets he holds about the 2022 campaign, allegedly including scandalous details of his private life.
Changes on the Constitutional Court
On May 20, the Senate elected Héctor Carvajal, Petro’s friend and lawyer, as new magistrate of the Constitutional Court.
Carvajal has been Petro’s personal lawyer since 2012, when he defended him in the disciplinary case against him by Alejandro Ordóñez (that led to his dismissal as mayor of Bogotá) and had most recently led the president’s legal team defending him in the CNE’s investigation for violating spending limits in the 2022 election. But Carvajal is also friends with other politicians from across the spectrum, having previously represented Álvaro Uribe’s sons in a high-profile scandal, and has obtained at least a dozen public contracts in recent years. With his proximity to both Uribe and Petro, Carvajal had facilitated the famous meeting between Uribe and Petro after the 2022 election. Defending himself against accusations and fears that he would be biased in favour of Petro, Carvajal said that the fact that he’d represented people from different parties showed that he had no political affiliation.
Carvajal was the undeniable favourite from a list (terna) of three candidates presented by Petro to replace outgoing magistrate Cristina Pardo, a conservative nominated by Santos in 2017. He has political connections but no great background or experience in constitutional law or the judicial branch, in contrast to the other two (lesser-known) candidates nominated by Petro, Karena Caselles, an experienced auxiliary magistrate on the Constitutional Court, and Dídima Rico, an auxiliary magistrate of the JEP. As was anticipated, Carvajal won with 66 votes, likely with backing from the Pacto, La U (he is close to La U’s old boss, Valle governor Dilian Francisca Toro—and they’re both originally from the same town, Guacarí), the Greens, Liberals and Conservatives. Caselles, who made a strong case for herself in the Senate and convinced those critical or skeptical of Carvajal, got an unexpectedly big haul of 26 votes (Rico won just 2 votes).
His election (and nomination) has been criticized by several jurists because of his close connections to Petro (his personal lawyer!) and politicians, and because he breaks the gender balance on the court (which has recently had 4 women out of 9). Rodrigo Uprimny wrote that “Petro does not seem to want a defender of the constitution on the Court so much as a defender of President Petro himself and his government.” In addition, Carvajal, who is 66, won’t serve his full eight-year term because he’ll be subject to forced retirement at the age of 70 (Carvajal circulated an unsigned legal opinion that it doesn’t apply to him, an argument which doesn’t hold much water). This means that the next president will get to nominate an extra magistrate in just over three years or so.
Carvajal is the second magistrate of the Court nominated by Petro. In 2023, the Senate elected Vladimir Fernández, who had been Petro’s legal secretary of the presidency. In his two ‘picks’ for the highest court, Petro chose personal lawyers rather than progressive/left-wing constitutional lawyers, seemingly more interested in securing votes to defend his government rather than ensuring a progressive legacy on the Court. Carvajal joins the Court just as it is expected to soon render a decision on the pension reform (perhaps by the end of the month), anticipated to be the biggest judicial decision of the year.
The balance of the Constitutional Court has become a very hot political issue. In one of his weekly columns in El Tiempo last year, former vice president Germán Vargas Lleras claimed that the government had plans to capture a majority on the Court. Vargas Lleras counted that Petro already had three magistrates on his side (Fernández as well as liberal-minded Juan Carlos Cortés and Natalia Ángel), now joined by Carvajal, leaving Petro one vote away (allegedly) from securing ‘control’ of the Court, with two other vacancies in 2025. For some, the Court’s recent 5-4 decision to provisionally suspend the CNE’s case against Petro raised alarms that the government had consolidated a majority on the Court. In practice, it isn’t so simple: there haven’t been clear blocs on votes on government measures, and the ideological blocs aren’t always neatly defined. For example, in the Court’s recent decision declaring the partial constitutionality of the state of internal disturbance declared in the Catatumbo, a 6-3 majority opted for a compromise decision, declaring the constitutionality only of those measures related to the current conflict, attacks on the civilian population and the humanitarian crisis (striking down measures related to structural factors).
Carvajal is the second of the four new magistrates that will join the Court in 2025. Miguel Polo Rosero, conservative-minded but supported by the governing coalition, was elected from a shortlist presented by the Council of State last November and was seated in February. There will be two more vacancies to be filled this year, both from shortlists presented by the Supreme Court: that of Diana Fajardo, who leaves in early June, and José Fernando Reyes, who will leave in September. On May 22, the Supreme Court presented an all-woman shortlist of three candidates for the first vacancy, eschewing bigger political names in favour of lesser-known academics. The candidates are Lisneider Hinestroza, a lawyer from Chocó specialized in environmental law and Afro-Colombian community collective land rights; Lina Marcela Escobar, an academic and former auxiliary magistrate on the Council of State; and Myriam Carolina Martínez, a conservative expert in commercial law who was director of the National Lands Agency (ANT) under Iván Duque’s presidency.