Colombian Politics Digest XIV: Crisis of confidence
Álvaro Leyva dreams up a wild golpista conspiracy against Petro, Laura Sarabia leaves government and Petro shares the stage with some disreputable gang bosses in Medellín.
It’s been another crazy two weeks in Colombian politics—from golpista confabulations concocted by Petro’s former foreign minister Álvaro Leyva, to the downfall of foreign minister Laura Sarabia and outrage over Petro sharing the state with criminal gang leaders in Medellín, the whole with another diplomatic crisis with the US in the background. Petro governs through chaos and a crisis of confidence.
All that and more in this edition of Colombian Politics Digest.
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Álvaro Leyva’s golpista confabulations
On June 29, El País revealed secret audio recordings in which Álvaro Leyva, Petro’s former foreign minister (2022-2024), speaks of ‘bringing down’ Petro, seeking the support and complicity of the Trump administration.
In the audio recordings (from a few months back), Leyva talks about the need to get Petro out of office, replacing him with vice president Francia Márquez, through some sort of conspiracy that would involve ‘armed and unarmed actors’, like the ELN and Clan del Golfo. Leyva sought the support of the Trump administration in the United States. He claims to have met with Florida Republican congressman Mario Díaz-Balart, seeking his help to influence Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to get him to exert international pressure to oust Petro. El País reports that the White House never considered the proposal.
Leyva claimed that he had all the tools necessary to execute his plan and that vice president Francia Márquez was part of his plan. He said that he was ‘on top of her’, and that he was the one who made her speak out angrily during the infamous trainwreck livestreamed cabinet meeting in early February.
In the audio recordings, Leyva argues that Petro must leave office with a ‘national agreement’ (acuerdo nacional). He mentions right-wing presidential candidate Vicky Dávila, the former director of Semana magazine, as a valid interlocutor in this conspiracy. He also mentions the possibility of also consulting with uribista senator and presidential pre-candidate Miguel Uribe, who remains in critical condition after an assassination attempt in early June.
Álvaro Leyva (82), was Petro’s first foreign minister, entrusted to lead the new administration’s ambitious foreign policy but also manage the paz total policy—he was the ‘foreign minister of peace’. Following a messy tenure, he was suspended from office by the Procuraduría in early 2024 for having irregularly cancelled the entire bidding process for passport production on Petro’s direct orders. Leyva felt that he’d been removed from office for being loyal to Petro, and expected to be rewarded in some other way. However, Petro slowly drifted away from Leyva, stopped taking his calls, leaving Leyva to feel betrayed. Since April, Leyva started publishing public letters to Petro, in which he claims that Petro is a drug addict, unable to fulfill his duties and urging him to resign from office. Leyva felt that the letters’ scandalous details would be the first push in a concerted effort to oust Petro. Instead, they just reconfirmed everyone’s preconceived ideas.
When those letters came out, Petro claimed that Leyva was part of an international plot, along with Díaz-Balart, to remove him from office. Petro learned about the audio recordings about two months ago. Petro has been talking about supposed coupist plots for years now, but no one was taking him seriously and his claims of a plot against him had been losing steam. Now, Leyva’s plot is the first concrete evidence of an actual golpista plot by someone of national influence, and gives new fuel to Petro’s old narrative.
According to El País, Petro confronted Francia Márquez, his vice president, after learning about the plots and demanded that she publicly reject the plot. She denied any involvement, but didn’t do as he asked. Relations between Petro and Francia Márquez, marginalized and sidelined in the administration, were already quite bad (she resigned her ministerial portfolio, as equality minister, in late February), but Petro now feels betrayed by her. Since the audios have come out, Petro has said that everyone mentioned in the audios must give explanations, in public and before justice. That includes Francia Márquez. On June 29, she released a statement categorically denying any involvement in the plot (although she doesn’t say she didn’t know about it) and stating that she’s never betrayed or questioned the authority of the head of state. She has since asked that the Fiscalía opens a criminal investigation into the plot, reasserting that her conscience is clear.
Álvaro Leyva, because of his old contacts and mediation efforts with the guerrillas since the late 1980s, has earned a reputation as a plotter, so this sort of thing is ‘expected’ from him (and he had already been dismissed as a decrepit crazy old man by Petro and his allies), but Francia Márquez has become the real traitor for petristas, who have lined up to take shots at her. On July 8, an investigate program on Señal Colombia (the main TV channel under RTVC, the public broadcaster) about the ‘plan to overthrow Petro’ tied together various events, people and elements since February that aren’t necessarily connected to this ‘international plot’, beginning with Francia Márquez’s ‘divisive’ comments during that cabinet meeting in February.
Vicky Dávila, mentioned by Leyva in the recordings, has denied having anything to do with the plot. She’s since published ‘irrefutable evidence’ of this, in the form of a recorded phone call with Leyva in which he says that she never partook in any plot. She now conspiratively claims that her name being mixed up in this is in itself a plot, to get her out of the presidential race “alive, discredited, prosecuted or dead.” Her new favourite sparring partner, leftist presidential candidate and former mayor of Medellín Daniel Quintero, has jumped in to call her a golpista (for meeting with Díaz-Balart in February 2025 to ‘orchestrate’ the coup), making her a traitor and sell-out, and irresponsibly claim, without any evidence, that Miguel Uribe was shot to stage a coup against Petro. Quintero has called on Leyva and Dávila to be investigated for their ‘possible participation’ in Miguel Uribe’s assassination attempt.
In a lengthy interview with Semana published on July 5, Leyva gave his first public comments on the entire matter, rambling a lot and not really disproving petristas’ claims that he is a crazy old man. He denies being a golpista or actively plotting a coup with anyone, but adamantly defends his right to say whatever he wants in ‘illegally recorded audios’. He rambles about how Petro can leave office without a coup, what he calls ‘dialogic neoconstitutionalism’, an ‘harmonious collaboration’ between the branches of government (which he bizarrely claims originated in Canada’s notwithstanding clause)—all this, he asserts, would somehow allow Petro to be removed from the presidency. He says that Petro’s term ‘doesn’t necessarily’ end on August 7, 2026 because he can get sick, he could die’ (at the end, he also says that an overdose could kill him at any moment).
By the looks of it, Leyva’s plot was little more than the golpista confabulations of an old man, that had no real chance of succeeding. He had, it seems, no real contact or conversations about this plan with other Colombian political figures, US government officials or the military. It pales in comparison to Juan Manuel Santos and company’s famous 1997 conspiracy against then-president Ernesto Samper (in which Leyva was also involved). Colombia is not a country with a history or tradition of coups—the last successful coups were General Rojas Pinilla’s 1953 coup and the coup that removed him from power in 1957. Political leaders have all denounced Leyva’s conspiracy.
However, right-wingers feel that Levya’s plotting is a convenient smokescreen, hiding another potential scandal—what Petro was doing in Manta (Ecuador) on May 24 while he was in the country to attend president Daniel Noboa’s second inauguration. On June 28, in El Tiempo, Mauricio Vargas wrote that an Ecuadorian journalist had told him that, while in Manta, Petro may have met with ‘Fito’, an Ecuadorian gang leader, who was rearrested in late June (though it now appears he may have handed himself in), to pressure alias‘ Mordisco’s FARC dissidents to return to peace negotiations. The Ecuadorian media has also wildly speculated that Petro potentially met with ‘Fito’, who had sent a letter to the Colombian ambassador seeking their help to avoid extradition to the US. The Ecuadorian interior minister claims that he can neither confirm nor deny if Fito met with Petro. Petro said that he stayed in Manta to write some pages in a book about the ‘relationship between capital accumulation and the climate crisis’, and he says that he has no idea who Fito is. An official statement from the presidency has reiterated that it is ‘absolutely false’ that Petro met with Fito. Right-wingers grumble that Leyva’s golpista delusions are distracting attention from what they think is the real story, Manta.
Sidenote: Diplomatic crisis with the United States (2.0)
On July 3, Marco Rubio recalled the US chargé d’affaires in Bogotá for urgent consultations “following baseless and reprehensible statements from senior Colombian government officials.” Rubio didn’t mention what these comments were, but Petro had implied possible ‘far-right’ American involvement in the many real and imagined plots against him, he’d compared the new ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ migrant detention camps in Florida to concentration camps and he recently suspended the extradition of drug traffickers involved in peace talks. The vociferously ‘anti-communist’ Cuban Florida Republicans have again ramped up their rhetoric against Petro. Rep. Carlos Gimenez welcomed Rubio’s decision by calling Petro a ‘narcoterrorist socialist thug’. The media has also reported that the US has begun to withdraw visas of government officials who had previously belonged to armed groups, like the M-19, including labour minister Antonio Sanguino and finance minister Germán Ávila.
Tit for tat, Petro also recalled his ambassador in Washington. Some 25 or so pro-government congressmen have asked the US House’s ethics committee to investigate and sanction Florida GOP reps. Díaz-Balart, Gimenez and María Elvira Salazar for ‘interference and undignified treatment of President Petro’. However, the Colombian media has since reported that, on June 23, a week before the crisis blew up, Petro had sent a conciliatory private letter to Trump, writing that he had no intention of directly accusing the US government in his public comments, and regreted that some of his words may have been perceived as unnecessarily harsh. He expressed his wish to turn the page on these misunderstandings. It’s unclear if Trump read the letter.
The final downfall of Laura Sarabia
On July 3, foreign minister Laura Sarabia resigned following disagreements with Petro (and Alfredo Saade, the president’s new chief of staff) over the passport imbroglio, an old lingering mess that has played out over three foreign ministers and cost the job of two of them (Leyva and now Sarabia). It is the final downfall of the young (31) and ambitious Laura Sarabia, once the most powerful woman in the palace. Her story since 2022 is kind of a parable of political life and power in Petro’s entourage.
The passport mess is an old story that began in 2023 and is about a controversial bidding process for the production of passports that’s turned into something of a personal obsession for the president. The lucrative contract to produce passports has been held since 2007 by Thomas Greg & Sons, the Colombian subsidiary of a British multinational and a big government contractor for electoral matters. The initial tender specifications were clearly designed to favour them, and the foreign ministry ignored multiple complaints and warnings. However, Petro, who has a bone to pick with Thomas Greg since 2018, decreed that there should not be any single-bid contracts and Leyva, in a 180, obeyed his orders and in September 2023 vacated the entire procurement process. To avoid a crisis, the ministry needed to directly award an emergency contract to Thomas Greg—who, at the same time, began suing the government for nearly $30 million over the cancelled tender. Leyva, backed by Petro, refused to settle the case, despite having been advised to do so by the government’s top lawyer. For this mess, then-Inspector General Margarita Cabello suspended Leyva from office for three months in January 2024 (in November 2024, the Procuraduría found him guilty and disqualified him from public office for a decade).
The next foreign minister, Luis Gilberto Murillo, now running for president, was responsible for executing Petro’s order that the public sector take charge of the passport business. He announced that the Imprenta Nacional, the national printing office (mostly in charge of printing the Diario Oficial, the official journal), would eventually take charge, with the initial support of a private strategic partner and a foreign government partner, a public-private partnership. Murillo later announced a deal with Portugal’s Casa da Moeda (the Portuguese mint and printing office), who would produce passport booklets for 10 years from 2025. The whole thing remained a mess because the Imprenta Nacional is still not ready or capable of assuming this new role. The emergency contract with Thomas Greg was renewed for another 11 months in September 2024, with a more expensive price tag than the first one.
Murillo left the government in late January 2025 to begin his presidential campaign, and was replaced by Sarabia. Among other headaches, she inherited the lingering passport issue. In late June, amidst reports that the foreign ministry would have no choice but to again extend the emergency contract with Thomas Greg, Murillo attacked his sucessor, claiming that he’d left everything ready for the new model to begin in September. Sarabia fired back, tweeting that if that were so, the responsible thing to do would have been to sign the contract before going off to run for president. On June 24, Sarabia announced that the emergency contract would be extended by another 11 months, in order to buy time for the new model with the Portuguese and the Imprenta Nacional. The next day, Petro rebuked her during a televised cabinet meeting, announcing that Thomas Greg would not continue with the business.
On July 2, Alfredo Saade—the evangelical ‘pastor’ who is Petro’s new chief of staff—went above Sarabia’s head and announced that, on the president’s orders, the government is about to sign a contract with the Portuguese Casa da Moeda for passport production, in partnership with the Imprenta Nacional. Saade also publicly admonished the foreign ministry for, in his view, not taking the necessary steps to prepare for what will happen from September (when the current emergency contract ends) and seeking to perpetuate the contract with the same supplier without competition. However, in a document from the foreign ministry to the Procuraduría, dated June 25, obtained by Caracol Radio, the ministry effectively states that the Imprenta Nacional is not ready to produce passports from September and that it would need 35 weeks to get ready. Saade has tried to reassure the public that they wouldn’t be left without passports. The whole matter is the product of improvisation in public policy, a trademark Petro trait.
Sarabia, who was abroad at the time, started drafting her letter of resignation. Clearly sidelined and disavowed, she had little choice but to resign. Her letter makes clear that she disagrees and cannot go along with the decisions taken in recent days, noting that these are not small differences or a matter of who’s correct. In a rather cold and paternalistic tweet, Petro thanked her and wished her luck, all while reducing her work on his 2022 campaign to that of an ‘organizing little ant’ (hormiguita organizadora) and cryptically writing that ‘greed is the enemy of revolution and life’. Bizarrely, Petro hoped that Sarabia was a “better woman today than she was when she met me.”
In an interview with Cambio published July 6, Sarabia directed her attacks on Saade, accused of usurping powers and responsibilities that aren’t his, sowing chaos and uncertainty. She accused him of ordering that passport appointments be delayed to make the remaining ‘stock’ of blank passports last longer. She asserted that she could not deceive the president and the country by upholding the lie that the Imprenta Nacional will be ready to produce 8,000 passports a day in 2 months time.
Sarabia’s resignation is her final downfall from Petro’s inner circle. She enjoyed a meteoric rise to the top, from unknown young political staffer in Armando Benedetti’s shadow (she was 28 in 2022) to most powerful woman in the palace as Petro’s first chief of staff (2022-Jun. 2023). As Petro’s ‘gatekeeper’, she managed his agenda and schedule, acted as the line of communication with ministers and oversaw his security. She was one of the administration’s few reliable channels with the private sector, organizing a meeting between Petro and the country’s top business magnates in October 2023. While she was temporarily set aside following the ‘nannygate’ scandal in 2023, she never lost the president’s trust and she returned to power only months later, becoming director of the Social Prosperity Department (DPS) in September 2023 and finally returning to the palace as director of the presidential office (Dapre) in February 2024.
However, she was at the heart of political intrigues and her power and influence over the president won her a lot of enemies within the administration, particularly from the ‘leftist’ faction led by Augusto Rodríguez, head of the UNP. Her critics have depicted her as a ruthless, self-seeking, deceitful political opportunist who has drawn personal profit from her positions in government. She has been implicated in several scandals, most notoriously the ‘nannygate’ scandal in 2023, when her son’s nanny was subjected to a polygraph test in a dungy basement and illegal wiretaps after being suspected of stealing a briefcase filled with cash from Sarabia’s apartment. Her brother and an advisor have been accused of directing public contracts. She had a violent, telenovela-esque falling-out with her original mentor, Armando Benedetti, resentful and jealous of his ambitious former protégé’s rapid ascent—while he was sent away to languish in Caracas as ambassador. He was an accomplice in the ‘nannygate’ scandal and, in explosive fragments of voice messages from Benedetti to Sarabia, released by Semana in June 2023, Benedetti threatens to ‘screw everyone’ and mentions the secrets of the 2022 campaign they’d work on together, like the 15,000 million pesos that went to the campaign (unreported).
By last fall, she was starting to fall out of favour with Petro and their relations had deteriorated, as the president grew tired of her excessive influence while the cabinet was a dysfunctional mess. Last November, Armando Benedetti’s forceful political comeback, marked the beginning of the end for her. Benedetti, seen as the ‘fixer’ that Petro needed, quickly amassed power and influence, rising to become chief of staff in early 2025 and interior minister in March. She publicly denied any rift with Petro and tried to put a brave face on it, with little choice but to acquiesce to her enemy’s return (a few months ago, she submitted new evidence against her ‘colleague’ Benedetti in investigations against him for illicit enrichment and gender-based violence).
In late January 2025, she was appointed foreign minister, moving out of Petro’s inner circle. She had lobbied for that job, and made clear that it was the only position she would accept in exchange for leaving the palace. It was obvious, however, that she was no longer in Petro’s good graces, which meant that it open season for her enemies. Sarabia and Benedetti were the targets of attacks from several ministers during the infamous televised cabinet meeting in early February, accusing her of being corrupt, a traitor and a blackmailer. While Petro defended Benedetti—and within a month, promoted him to interior minister, where he’s become the most powerful man in cabinet—he did not come to Sarabia’s defence. She opted to take a low profile, seeking to survive politically.
As foreign minister, she needed to stomach several embarrassments and humiliations. Even before she officially became foreign minister, Petro resented the way she resolved the first diplomatic and commercial crisis with Trump in January, feeling that she’d ignored him and gone over his head. In April 2025, as foreign minister she congratulated Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa on his reelection, only to be contradicted a day later by Petro, who initially refused to recognize the results. Before and during Petro’s trip to China in May, she was publicly humiliated and disavowed by the boss. The passport crisis was the last straw, and she was unwilling to weather the various investigations and legal problems that she anticipates will come out of the passport imbroglio.
Politics anywhere is a treacherous business that’s not for the faint of heart. On top of that, Gustavo Petro is a very distrustful man, often described as cold, distant, secretive and very demanding of subordinates. In three years in office, Petro has had over 60 cabinet ministers and department heads, a very high turnover. Several of them have been fired, dismissed or quit, and many of them are now on bad terms with Petro. Sarabia, talented and ambitious, enjoyed a stunningly rapid political rise thanks to Petro’s trust and confidence. Her fortunes shifted once she lost the president’s trust and was pushed out of his entourage. Today, surrounded by the likes of Benedetti, Saade and justice minister Eduardo Montealegre, Petro wants loyalists or ‘yes men’ who will go along with his ideas and projects, no matter the risks or feasibility.
Sarabia’s resignation also leaves Colombian foreign policy temporarily headless.
Provocation in Medellín: Criminal gang leaders share the stage with Petro
On June 21, during a public rally in Medellín, Petro shared the stage with nine leaders of the criminal gangs of the Medellín region (Valle de Aburrá), who had been temporarily released from prison in Itagüí for the event. The event was presented as a ‘pact for urban peace’, and the gang leaders read a statement about the peace talks with the government that began two years ago (and which are going nowhere). The presence of the gang leaders on stage with Petro, roundly criticized and denounced, was seen as a provocation, aimed at the conservative antioqueño establishment (Antioquia and Medellín are the strongholds of the right-wing opposition and uribismo).
Petro’s event was originally advertised as event to celebrate the adoption of the labour reform the day before, and later as a ‘pact for urban peace’, an act of forgiveness between victims and spokespersons of the gangs who are negotiating peace from the Itagüí prison. The event was held in La Alpujarra, the administrative centre home to the departmental and municipal administrations—quite literally at the feet of the two regional leaders of the right-wing opposition, Medellín’s mayor Fico Gutiérrez (2022 right-wing presidential candidate) and Antioquia’s uribista governor Andrés Julián Rendón.
In his lengthy speech, Petro talked about anything and everything, as he usually does.
In June 2023, the government opened peace talks with Medellín’s criminal gangs, or combos. Many of these gangs, who are involved in micro-trafficking, extortion, contract killings or provide services to transnational drug traffickers, are part of the Oficina de Envigado, a loose confederations of gangs of varying levels and differing capabilities that began in the 1980s as a debt collection agency (and enforcement wing) for Pablo Escobar. There are around 20 big criminal structures, made up of over 350 combos with about 12,000-14,000 members. To facilitate the peace talks, in 2023 the government transferred the gang leaders to the Itagüí prison, where they claim to be able to control 80-90% of criminality.
Since 2023, progress has been extremely slow. Two years later, there isn’t even an approved agenda for the negotiations. It has been neglected by the high commissioner for peace, busy elsewhere. One of the main problems is that there isn’t a legal backing for these negotiations. Because the gangs don’t have political status in the armed conflict, despite their (laughable) claims to the contrary, the government can’t negotiate a traditional peace agreement with them and there currently isn’t any legal framework to offer attractive judicial benefits to the combos. After the government’s proposed ley de sometimiento (collective surrender to justice law) died in Congress in 2023 without even being debated, the government hasn’t presented any new legislative measures and has sought to keep the ‘urban peace’ dialogues in Medellín, Buenaventura and Quibdó alive through other means. But the unescapable reality is that, without a ley de sometimiento, the government has nothing to offer to the combos.
In the case of Medellín, paz total is about ‘negotiating peace when there is no war.’ From being the most violent city in the world in 1991, Medellín now enjoys the lowest homicide rate since the 1940s. In 2024, there were 329 homicides, the lowest absolute number since the 1970s, and the homicide rate in the city has fallen to around 14 per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 416 in 1991 and 101 in 2009, the last violent peak (amidst a bloody conflict for control of the city’s criminal structures following the extradition of ‘Don Berna’). Desperate to overinflate the achievements of the peace talks with the gangs, the government has claimed that the sustained reduction in homicide rates is thanks to paz total/paz urbana in Medellín. As goodwill gestures or signs of commitment to peace, the combos declared a truce in September 2022, various cessation of hostilities since then and have extended a ‘no extortion’ pilot program in select neighbourhoods. However, as the FIP analyzed, the drop in murders is more likely the result of a ‘domestication’ of violence by the gangs, a more ‘rational’ use of homicidal violence and some sort of pax mafiosa that began around 2019.
Although progress has been very slow and the talks are going nowhere, the urban peace process in Medellín hasn’t been a total failure—unlike many of the other peace negotiations of paz total. The gangs have shown ‘patience’ in the face of legal uncertainties because keeping the peace talks alive been have beneficial for them: the prison transfers, a better climate for their businesses and it’s given them media visibility and a political platform that could help them shake off their criminal legacy and gain political status as players in the armed conflict. They’ve made good faith offerings in anticipation of whoever wins in 2026.
The event in La Alpujarra was the biggest political platform for Medellín’s gang leaders. The nine sharing the stage with Petro included some of the top leaders in Medellín’s criminal world like ‘Douglas’ and ‘Tom’, the two most prominent leaders of the Oficina since the 2010s. The ‘spokespersons’ of the criminal structures had previously been temporarily released from prison to participate in public events held at the University of Antioquia earlier this year and last summer, but the event on June 21 was their biggest political exposure yet, with national impact. In a joint statement that was read out, the gang leaders complained that the talks were stalled and called on the government to speed up a legal framework offering a restorative approach.
For the government, the event was meant as an electroshock to revive a paralyzed process. Petro was accompanied, among others, by Pacto senator Isabel Zuleta, the coordinator of the government’s delegation in the peace process. In his speech, Petro proposed to look at the possibilities of judicial benefits, under existing laws, in exchange for a complete and definitive cessation of violence and criminality. That’s theoretically possible, but existing laws don’t offer a clear pathway for the dismantlement of criminal organizations.
Fico Gutiérrez, the mayor, called the event a ‘celebration of barbarity, a threat, an intimidation, a message of anything but peace’. Indeed, the event was a direct provocation aimed at the city and the region’s right-wing political establishment, led by Fico and Rendón, who have been critical of the peace process in the city. The gang leaders, on stage, accused Fico of sabotaging the process. Fico took the event as a direct threat because a big part of his local political persona is that of the relentless crime-fighting ‘sheriff’ and, in his first term, he oversaw the arrest of several of the gang leaders who were on stage—the arrest of ‘Tom’ in 2017 was one of the biggest ‘wins’. Petristas retort that they’re only doing publicly what others, like Fico, previously did secretly. They are quick to bring up the 2017 arrest of Fico’s first security secretary, Gustavo Villegas, for his alleged links to the Oficina. In an interview with RTVC Noticias (the public broadcaster), ‘Douglas’ claimed that he had secret meetings with Fico in 2016 to make under-the-table deals.
Petro’s entire visit to Medellín was replete with taunts aimed at Fico. After Fico and Rendón remarked that Medellín and Antioquia ‘don’t have a president’, Petro showed off his authority with the military receiving him with honours as their ‘commander in chief’. On stage with him was Daniel Quintero, Fico’s predecessor and local political arch-nemesis (was Quintero’s presence a subtle nod to his presidential candidacy by the president?).
Fico and Rendón were not the only ones to protest Petro’s sharing the stage with criminal bosses. His fellow mayors of capital cities (Asocapitales) described it as an “affront to justice, armed forces and citizens,” big business leaders (ANDI) called it worrying while security and conflict experts and analysts explained that Petro’s event ignored municipal and departmental authorities and a political provocation with a misleading assessment of the peace talk’s outcomes. Gregorio Eljach, the Inspector General, said that while peace is a noble pursuit, it requires ‘respect for victims, the dignity of the state and authorities’. The Ombudswoman, Iris Marín Ortiz (nominated by Petro), sensibly recognized that urban peace is a positive and necessary path but that it must be built on the rule of law and respect for victims’ rights, with those responsible for serious crimes should not have a place of honour but should fully submit to the law. She expressed preoccupation for the lack of coordination and ‘political rivalry’ between the national and local governments.
Poll of the moment
Guarumo/EcoAnalítica poll on 2026 presidential voting intentions (Jul. 1-5, 2026, n=2122, moe 2.2%)
In a left-wing primary, Gustavo Bolívar (29.2%) leads Daniel Quintero (20%), María José Pizarro (16.7%), Iván Cepeda (10.7%), Carolina Corcho (8.8%) and others.
In a centrist primary, Sergio Fajardo (33.9%) leads Claudia López (18.6%), Jota Pe Hernández (14.2%), Juan Daniel Oviedo (8.8%), Juan Manuel Galán (8.5%) and others.
In a right-wing, non-uribista primary, Vicky Dávila (51.9%) leads Germán Vargas Lleras (20.1%), Abelardo de la Espriella (9.1%) and others.
In a CD primary, Miguel Uribe Turbay (74.4%) leads María Fernanda Cabal (11.4%), Paloma Valencia (6.9%) and others.
In a ‘regional’ (former mayors and governors) primary, Aníbal Gaviria (25.4%) leads Jaime Pumarejo (22%), Enrique Peñalosa (18.3%) and others.
In other news
On June 28, in extraordinary session, the House of Representatives speedily re-adopted the pension reform, complying with the Constitutional Court’s recent order. Like in 2024, a majority of representatives (104 to 9) once again voted in favour of a proposal to adopt the Senate’s text. Petro and Bendetti proclaimed victory. Yet, the new vote was not without controversy: the opposition and some others denounced new irregularities, this time in the way the plenary session was summoned or that Congress hadn’t received the full text of the Court’s sentence (just a communiqué). As per the Court’s decision, the pension reform returns to the Court which will rule on its constitutionality, with its entry into force (save two articles) suspended until then.
On June 26, in a close 5-4 decision, the Constitutional Court ruled that the National Electoral Council (CNE) did not have the jurisdiction to investigate the president, and that the House of Representatives’ commission of accusation is the only competent authority to investigate the sitting president. In October 2024, the CNE had filed charges against Petro, as a presidential candidate, the campaign manager (Ricardo Roa, president of Ecopetrol) and others for breaking campaign spending limits (by 5 billion pesos, or US$1.3 million) and receiving contributions from prohibited sources (labour unions). The charges filed against Petro opened a legal debate over whether or not the CNE had the power to investigate a sitting president for possible campaign finance irregularities during the electoral campaign, or if that power belonged exclusively to the House’s commission of accusations, the body responsible for investigating all complaints against the president and bringing impeachment charges against the president. Last year, the Council of State ruled that the CNE could investigate the president, but Petro appealed the ruling to the Constitutional Court, arguing that it violated his right to due process and special constitutional fuero. The Court ruled in Petro’s favour, with a tight majority, and the outcome was celebrated by Petro and his supporters—although the Court’s decision undermined his old golpe blando/lawfare claims. The House’s commission of accusations is nicknamed the ‘commission of absolutions’—no incumbent president has been impeached, and mountains of accusations against presidents invariably die in the commission. Given the commission’s record, many legal experts worry that the Court’s decision guarantees immunity to future presidents for any campaign finance irregularities. The CNE’s investigation against others, like Roa, continues.
Álvaro Uribe’s trial for witness tampering and procedural fraud is in the final stages and the judge could issue her decision by the end of July. The defence and prosecution have presented their closing arguments. If the judge’s decision is appealed, the final word will be had by the three magistrates of the Superior Court of Bogotá, who’ll have to make a final ruling before October 2025, when the case will expire (statute of limitations).