Colombian Politics Digest IX: Political games
A summary of recent news in Colombian politics. Political intrigues abound.
In this edition: Political tensions remain high, but have cooled down some, as Colombia remains without a permanent attorney general until at least early March; Petro shuffles his cabinet and entourage, purging technocrats, trying to reward some friendly Conservative lawmakers and bringing an old trusted ally and right-hand woman back to his inner circle, while a troublesome and untrustworthy old ally is sent to Rome as an insurance policy.
Protracted tension: Still no attorney general
Last time, I talked about how political tensions reached a boiling point with the election of the next Attorney General by the Supreme Court. On January 25, February 8 and February 22, the Supreme Court failed to elect a new attorney general from the shortlist of three women sent by Gustavo Petro last September. On February 8, protests, instigated by Petro, demanding that the Supreme Court elect an attorney general turned quite heated, with protesters blocking the exits of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá and preventing magistrates from leaving.
Attorney general Francisco Barbosa left office as his term expired on February 13 and, as no successor had been elected, he’s been replaced in the interim by Martha Mancera, who had been his deputy. As I explained, Mancera is a controversial figure with a murky past, implicated in several scandals. Most notably, Mancera allegedly covered up the drug trafficking activities of the head of the CTI in Buenaventura (Valle) and went after the agents who had reported those accusations. However, a few days ago, La FM reported that there was another side to that story: two of the agents in question were themselves involved in drug-related activities, by falsifying documents and reports to pose as undercover agents.
As I anticipated, the fallout from the February 8 protests has only further inflamed tensions and deepened polarization between Petro and his opponents. While Petro at first tried to take a safe distance from the protest that had gotten out of hand—he was forced to call in riot police to disperse the protesters and lift their blockade of the Palace of Justice—within a day he circled back to his familiar rhetoric of ruptura institucional. He furiously tweeted against the ‘dishonest and manipulative’ media coverage of the events, claiming (as usual) that it was part of a far-right plot to destroy his progressive project and protect their impunity by impeding that a decent woman becomes attorney general. Petristas have disputed the use of the word ‘siege’ to describe the incident and claimed that the blockades were caused by infiltrators or deliberately staged by the media to generate disinformation.
On the other end, Petro’s opponents drew comparisons to the 1985 siege of the Palace of Justice or January 6, and the protests were proof that Petro is a danger to democracy and the institutions. The events of February 8 have also poisoned Petro’s relations with the Supreme Court. The Court had vehemently condemned the ‘siege’ and ‘illegal, violent blockade’.
Petro has found support from international organizations. The OAS, IACHR and the UN Human Rights office in Colombia have all called on the Supreme Court to conclude the election of the next attorney general as soon as possible, without interference. Rather disingenuously, Petro’s critics and opponents were outraged by these supposed attacks on Colombia’s democratic institutions and judicial independence. In a rather incoherent statement, Liberal leader and former president César Gaviria, who was Secretary General of the OAS for a decade (1994-2004), said that the OAS and IACHR’s comments “undermined the autonomy of the Supreme Court.” Uribista congressmen including senators María Fernanda Cabal, Paloma Valencia and Miguel Uribe travelled to Washington to express their views to Luis Almagro, the Secretary General of the OAS. Completely unhinged, Álvaro Uribe’s former Vice President (2002-2010) ‘Pacho’ Santos said that if he were president in 2026 he would tell the UN and IACHR to “go to hell.” Because Petro can’t help but drag himself into the dumbest arguments with washed-up attention-seekers, he called him an “apprentice of Hitler.” The Colombian right’s manic attacks on the UN and IACHR come just as Nicolás Maduro has expelled the UN human rights office from Venezuela…
Delays in the election of the attorney general and interim periods are not unusual—there’s been an interim period every time since 2009. However, as Rodrigo Uprimny pointed out in a recent column, so far, the Court has taken over 145 days since Petro’s final shortlist was presented in September 2023. This is longer than at any other point in the past, except for the 2009-2010 crisis. In 2020, the Court elected Barbosa 58 days after Iván Duque presented his shortlist, and in 2016 the Court elected Néstor Humberto Martínez 82 days after Juan Manuel Santos presented his nominees.
On February 22, no candidate had a majority after four more ballots were taken, but the Court came closer to reaching a consensus. Amelia Pérez Parra won 13 votes on the last ballot, three votes away from victory, with three votes for Ángela María Buitrago and six blank votes. The next vote is on March 7. The Supreme Court has made it clear (again) that the election will be on its terms and schedule. In contrast to the previous vote, Petro remained conspicuously silent (online and offline) before the latest vote.
Cabinet shuffle
A slow, drop by drop, cabinet shuffle is taking form, after months of persistent rumours.
On February 1, Jorge Iván González resigned as director of the National Planning Department (DNP), pushed out by Petro. González was the last of the ‘liberal technocrats’ in the government, after former minister José Antonio Ocampo, Alejandro Gaviria and Cecilia López were sacked in early 2023. The DNP, the citadel of Colombian technocracy, helps coordinate planning, investments and the policy cycles between different ministries. It’s also in charge of leading the elaboration of the National Development Plan (PND), the materialization of a new administration’s campaign promises into policies and investments.
González’s relations with Petro had gradually deteriorated over the past months. At the cabinet ‘conclave’ in late December, he was the main target of Petro’s ire and criticism, accusing him of not being aligned with the government’s priorities and supporting projects of former Bogotá mayor Claudia López that Petro has opposed. Petro also disliked González’s liberal economic ideas, like his support for demand-side financing of education (vouchers and student loan programs) and, in early 2023, his private criticisms of the healthcare reform. Increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of his reforms and difficulties in implementing his promises, Petro has blamed technocrats and the bureaucracy for holding back his agenda.
In a recent column in the economic paper La República, González eloquently expressed Petro’s difficulties at implementing his transformational ideas. He writes that while Petro’s ideas are “intrinsically valid,” he has not been able to resolve “the inevitable tension between facticity (of policy planning) and validity (of discourse).” Moreover, González concludes, “the absolutization of the goodness of the discourse has led to ignoring the complexity of its practical implementation.”
On February 23, Petro appointed former Pacto (Polo) senator Alexander López as the new director of the DNP. López is a former union leader and veteran left-wing politician from Cali (Valle), who served 21 years in Congress (in the House, 2002-2006, and in the Senate from 2006) and has been president of the Polo Democrático party since 2021. Last November, the Council of State had invalidated his election for ‘double militancy’ (because he had supported a Green candidate instead of the Pacto’s candidate in Santander in 2022). López’s legal challenges to the decision were going poorly. López is an unusual, very political, choice for the DNP, a position which has almost always been held by technocrats and economists. Indeed, López is the first planning director who isn’t an economist (he is a lawyer). His appointment, however, is in line with Petro’s increasing distrust of technocrats and belief that technocrats are responsible for inertia in government. Amidst controversy over a budget decree (see later in this post), the finance ministry’s budget director, Marcela Numa, resigned on February 15. Numa was a senior civil servant who had been in the finance ministry since 2006 and served as budget director, one of the most important officials in the budget process. She too was replaced by a much more political figure: Jairo Bautista, who had worked for former Pacto senator Gustavo Bolívar.
On February 15, Minister of Sports Astrid Rodríguez resigned. The writing was on the wall after the 2027 Pan Am Games fiasco, and her resignation came just in time to avoid a likely vote of no confidence in the Senate. Rodríguez was minister for just under a year, since March 2023. On February 1, Panam Sports confirmed that Barranquilla had lost the hosting rights for the 2027 Pan Am Games, essentially for failing to pay $8 million in hosting rights. While responsibility for this embarrassment is shared between the Duque and Petro administrations, as the chain of non-compliance with Colombia’s obligations began before August 2022, Rodríguez as minister failed to pay the $8 million by the (extended) deadline of December 30, even though in November she assured the organizing committee that they had the money. Petro’s last-ditch efforts to rescue the Games failed. While Petro has admitted some responsibility, he has attacked Panam Sports for “making fun” of Colombia and for being a ‘sports bureaucracy’ in a ‘competition for money’. Both the Contraloría and Procuraduría are investigating the Pan Am Games scandal.
The crisis in the sports ministry opened the door for the Conservatives to return (unofficially) to cabinet. The Conservatives quit the governing coalition and declared themselves independent in May 2023, after the coalition exploded and Petro fired transport minister Guillermo Reyes, who was considered a Conservative ‘quota’. Since then, the party leadership under senator Efraín Cepeda has been hostile to the government and its reforms, but the government has maintained cordial relations with Conservative congressmen (particularly in the House) who have in turn signaled their willingness to help out the government. Some representatives, for example, helped maintain the quorum during the healthcare reform debates last year. In exchange, the government had dangled the promise of bureaucratic representation, including the sports ministry, for Conservative congressmen.
On February 21, the media announced the appointment of Luz Cristina López Trejos as the new sports minister. According to W Radio, her name was recommended by Conservative representatives including the powerful Cesar representative Ape Cuello. Luz Cristina López is an academic with an experience in professional sports, who has worked with the Colombian Paralympic Committee and was operational director for the 2023 Youth Para Pan Am Games in Bogotá.
Efraín Cepeda quickly read the appointment as an attempt by the government to divide the party, and said that the new minister didn’t represent the party. He used it as an opportunity to stage a show of force against the government and reassert his leadership: Cepeda resigned as party president, confident that his majorities on the party executive would not accept his resignation. As planned, the party executive unanimously rejected his resignation, ratified him as president and expressed its “unrestricted support” for the positions adopted under his leadership. The party leadership also sent a message to any potential dissidents within its ranks, warning that any members who would ignore the party’s position would be subject to the “statutory procedures that sanction these types of behaviours.” Cepeda’s show of force has been seen as a major victory by the party leadership and a blow to the government’s efforts to undermine his leadership from within. El Colombiano reported that senior government officials, including interior minister Luis Fernando Velasco, unsuccessfully sought to suggest former Bolívar governor ‘Vicentico’ Blel as a new party leader. Cepeda himself said that members of the executive told him that they had received calls from the presidential palace urging them to accept his resignation. Cepeda is the undeclared frontrunner for the presidency of the Senate for the 2024-2025 legislative year (which falls on the Conservatives), and this victory reinforces him for that.
For the government, while it can count on the implicit support of some representatives in the House (although party discipline limits what they can do), it only has three or four supporters amongst the Conservatives’ 15 senators, an important bloc in the coming months as the healthcare reform faces a complicated (and must-win) battle in the upper house.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Laura Sarabia—Petro’s former chief of staff (until June 2023) and currently director of the Social Prosperity Department (DPS) since last September—will return to the inner circle of the presidency as the new director of the administrative department of the presidency (Dapre), replacing Carlos Ramón González. Sarabia, just 29 years old, is one of the most powerful women in the government and Petro’s trusted right-hand woman, quickly amassed tremendous power and influence as Petro’s chief of staff. Petro was reluctantly compelled to temporarily part ways with her in June 2023 when the Laura Sarabia nanny polygraph/wiretap scandal erupted, but she never lost the president’s trust (which is hard to win). That case against her is still chugging along, but so far she hasn’t had much reason to worry, given that there is little damaging and directly incriminating evidence. As soon as it was politically feasible (in September 2023), Petro had her return to government, as head of the DPS. However, given her close connections to Petro, her actual role far exceeded her official duties with the DPS. She served as the link with the business world, facilitating Petro’s meeting with some leading business magnates in November 2023, and accompanied Petro on several international trips, most recently to the Munich Security Conference.
As chief of staff, Sarabia enjoyed privileged access to Petro, managing his schedule (and his chronic unpunctuality) and acting as his gatekeeper and line of communication with ministers. Carlos Ramón González, a M-19 veteran and old Green apparatchik, had been managing Petro’s agenda and political relations with Congress as secretary-general of the presidency (head of the Dapre). Sarabia essentially returns to the job she held nine months ago, responsible for handling the president’s schedule, advising the president, coordinating ministers’ actions, managing political relations and the legislative agenda and heading a large and powerful department. Moreover, since 2022, the extents of Sarabia’s power and influence have almost constantly expanded, difficult to define and delineate. She’ll undoubtedly be tasked with bolstering the cabinet’s unity and coherence, improving Petro’s relations with his ministers and bringing more order and direction to the presidential office. Her return to where she was nine months ago shows that Petro is willing to assume the political costs of appointing a trusted ally with ongoing legal investigations and a very poor image in public opinion because of her scandal.
Carlos Ramón González received several offers for other positions in government and ultimately was appointed national intelligence director, heading Colombia’s intelligence agency (part of the presidency), the National Intelligence Directorate (DNI). The DPS, a key department—it has a budget of over $2.7 billion in 2024 and manages most of the government’s social programs—remains vacant for now.
Armando Benedetti’s return
On February 8, Armando Benedetti took office as Colombia’s ambassador to the FAO in Rome. Petro had fired Benedetti as ambassador to Venezuela in June 2023 because of his role in the Sarabia nanny scandal.
Armando Benedetti, who served twenty years in Congress (2002-2022), is a fiery, cunning and astute politician who knows how to maneuver his way into the centres of power. A man of few political principles or scruples, Benedetti joined Petro’s campaign in 2020, and Petro welcomed him even though he symbolized the clientelistic and amoral political class he criticized. In 2022, Benedetti helped organize Petro’s campaign in his native Caribbean and controlled Petro’s schedule and agenda. Following Petro’s victory, Benedetti was appointed ambassador to Venezuela, becoming Petro’s point man for the reestablishment of diplomatic ties with Maduro’s regime. While this was an important job, Benedetti quickly grew bored and unhappy with the role given to him and started angrily lashing out at Petro and Sarabia, who had been his protégé until her meteoric ascent alongside Petro.
By his own admission, Benedetti was an accomplice in Sarabia’s nanny polygraph scandal, and Sarabia’s entourage believed that he blackmailed her and suspected that he leaked the scandal to Semana.
Because of the scandal, Petro was forced to dismiss both Sarabia and Benedetti. While Petro was sad to part ways with Sarabia, Petro had little emotion in letting go of Benedetti. The president’s inner circle was worried that Benedetti could blackmail Petro with his knowledge of the secret details of the 2022 campaign and its finances. Those fears were proven correct when Semana released edited fragments of voice messages in which an enraged and emotionally unstable Benedetti threatens to ‘screw everyone’ by revealing explosive details of the 2022 campaign that could send them all to jail. Among other things, Benedetti mentions 15,000 million pesos that went to the campaign (unreported) and threatens to reveal who gave money to the campaign in the Caribbean. In an interview with Semana at the time, Benedetti insinuated that Petro uses cocaine (like him) and that the people who gave money to the campaign “weren’t entrepreneurs.” Benedetti quickly apologized to Petro and denied that the ‘malicious attacks’ came from him. Petro overrode the objections of foreign minister Álvaro Leyva and allowed him to stay in Caracas until July 19.
Since then, Benedetti has kept quiet and made use of his right to remain silent. Now that the issue of the 2022 campaign financing has become even more critical for Petro, Benedetti’s silence is golden. His return fuels suspicions that he can blackmail Petro with compromising information and incriminating evidence he may have.
To keep his troublesome ally within his circle but at a safe distance, Petro recreated a diplomatic posting just for him. The job of ambassador to the FAO in Rome had been eliminated in 1999 and the tasks carried out by the embassy in Rome. Petro recreated the job as part of an expansion of Colombia’s diplomatic network abroad which will see the country open ten new embassies, including in Palestine. The decree appointing Benedetti was signed by (suspended) foreign minister Álvaro Leyva, who had previously called Benedetti a drug addict. Of course, Benedetti is not a diplomat, didn’t shine as ambassador in Caracas and has no expertise on agricultural and food issues. Unsurprisingly, his appointment has displeased the diplomatic corps, in part because of Benedetti’s sulfurous reputation and decidedly undiplomatic behaviour. Benedetti himself told W Radio that the FAO embassy isn’t what he would have wanted but that it’ll do (he also said that he deserves it because Petro owes him).
Benedetti’s new posting not only is an insurance policy for Petro, but it also protects him. As ambassador, the different court cases against him (for illicit enrichment, influence peddling etc.) will remain in the hands of the Fiscalía rather than risk going back to the more threatening Supreme Court.
In other news
Another crisis in the ELN peace process. On Feb. 19, the ELN guerrilla’s Central Command (COCE) announced it was freezing peace negotiations, protesting the government’s decision to open a regional peace dialogue with an ELN front in Nariño. The COCE was aware of this from the beginning but became concerned that one front’s greater desire for peace would put pressure on the very slow pace of negotiations nationally and that parallel talks would weaken the unity of command—a very sensitive issue for the ELN, which has a more horizontal command structure. For a public opinion that’s grown increasingly wary of Petro’s total peace, this was further confirmation that the ELN has no genuine desire for peace. For the government’s peace negotiators, the ELN is creating “unnecessary crises” and Otty Patiño, the high commissioner for peace, has said that it could be a “good crisis” if the ELN reflects about its strategy. In early February, the ELN’s western war front in Chocó announced an “armed strike” (paro armado) in the region, in the midst of a conflict with the Clan del Golfo, but ended it three days later after criticism from the government that it went against the recently extended bilateral ceasefire. A recent report by the Fundación Ideas para la Paz (FIP) warned that illegal armed groups were playing both sides: in peace talks with the government in search of benefits and strengthening themselves militarily to expand and consolidate their social and territorial control. The expansion of these groups reduces their incentives to negotiate a real peace agreement.
Economic growth was just 0.6% in 2023 according to the DANE, lower than the finance ministry’s projection (1.2%). Construction (-4.2%), manufacturing (-3.5%) and trade and transportation (-2.8%) had negative growth in 2023. In 2022, the economy had grown by 7.3%, following recovery from the pandemic and the 2021 protests.
The finance ministry needed to correct mistakes in the liquidation decree of the 2024 budget. The economic newspaper Portafolio had highlighted a series of legal and technical mistakes in the liquidation decree signed in late December 2023—notably, 13 trillion pesos ($3.3 billion) in investment spending were not appropriately detailed, jeopardizing money for key infrastructure projects like the Bogotá metro. This was deliberate, as Petro had complained that the budget appropriations didn’t reflect campaign promises and that spending needed to be ‘reprioritized’, towards marginalized regions. Petro disliked that those 13 trillion pesos had already been committed by previous administrations (future budgetary allocations known as vigencias futuras) to finance capital projects that he didn’t choose. The private sector, including private concessionaires, raised the alarm about these inconsistencies and mistakes, warning that they weakened investor confidence and would discourage businessmen from investing in Colombia. For once, the government gave in to the pressure from the private sector and corrected course, while denying that there had been any mistakes or legal problems in the first place.
A series of high impact robberies in restaurants and shootings in affluent northern Bogotá have monopolized media attention, generated understandable panic and worsened perceptions of insecurity. In contrast to public perception, crime stats for January 2024 showed a substantial drop in criminality. This viral crime spree has become a headache for Bogotá mayor Carlos Fernando Galán, who was looking to change public perception of criminality in his first 100 days with high profile police operations in strategic locations. This now includes ‘gourmet patrols’ around restaurants and bars. During an attempted armed robbery in a restaurant, a retired police officer shot and killed two criminals. This alleged case of ‘self-defence’ has reignited the political debate around gun control—carry permits have been suspended since 2016, and obtaining permits for personal possession or carrying of firearms is very strictly regulated. Some right-wing politicians, like CD senator María Fernanda Cabal, have again come out in favour of allowing individuals to legally carry weapons for self-defence.
Petro selected Cali as the host city for the COP16 (UN Biodiversity Conference) in late October. Cali was competing against Bogotá to host the conference, the biggest international event to be hosted in Colombia. Some 12,000 delegates, journalists, politicians and experts are expected to attend the event. Besides the logistical challenges, the COP16 will be a big security challenge for Cali, the most violent major city in Colombia. Political journalists read Petro’s decision as a reward to Cali mayor Alejandro Eder, who has been seeking a cordial relation with the president despite political differences.
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