Livestreaming a dysfunctional cabinet meeting
On Feb. 4, Petro broadcast a full cabinet meeting, revealing just how dysfunctional and factionalized the government is and precipitating a cabinet crisis.
On the evening of February 4, President Gustavo Petro decided, for the first time ever, to broadcast, live, a full cabinet meeting, lasting six hours. The first hours were broadcast live on national television, including the main private channels, as a presidential address. The rest continued to be broadcast on public television and online.
Petro took the decision to broadcast the cabinet meeting without informing any of his ministers, who showed up to the cabinet meeting to learn that it’d be filmed.
The unprecedented live broadcast of a full cabinet meeting was presented as an act of transparency by the president, but it ended up being six hours of telenovela or reality TV-worthy drama, personal acrimony and chaos that highlighted just how dysfunctional and factionalized the cabinet is. The cabinet meeting, which has become the subject of viral memes online, included a lengthy public scolding by Petro, recriminations and barbs between ministers, accusations of corruption, tears, jokes, declarations of love to the president, historical references, philosophical divagations and other esoteric reflections by Petro. Notably, the cabinet meeting, despite lasting six hours, didn’t debate or approve any urgent policy items or executive decisions.
Petro, the centre of the show
According to La Silla Vacía, Petro spoke for 68% of the time—equivalent to about four hours. Indeed, Petro alone spoke for the first 90 minutes of the cabinet meeting (transcribed here). Petro lectured and scolded his cabinet ministers for not fulfilling his campaign promises or spending their approved budgetary expenditures. He said that 146 of 195 presidential promises hadn’t been kept. Few of the ministers present were spared the president’s wrath and frustration. In one of the more viral moments, Petro curtly reprimanded the education minister, Daniel Rojas, for arriving late, telling him that his portfolio had already been evaluated and to ask his colleagues about it. He repeatedly claimed that some ministers had ‘parallel agendas’ (personal political/electoral ambitions) and that his orders weren’t being obeyed or ignored. He complained that the president is revolutionary, but the government isn’t.
Several ministers shared their challenges with Petro, including the lack of articulation and coordination between different departments and agencies. Some of them politely pushed back on his accusations of having ‘parallel agendas’. Petro seemed rather uninterested by these concrete challenges, and didn’t offer any help to overcome obstacles. Instead, he lectured them, like a professor, explaining the broad concepts of his vision—for example, he instructed the foreign minister to come up with a strategy to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. The difficulty of translating his broad vision and ambitious goals into tangible, concrete policy realizations and achievements has been the common thread of Petro’s time in executive office. Petro is visibly impatient and frustrated by these difficulties, and is worried about his legacy.
When he wasn’t harshly evaluating his ministers’ (poor) performance, Petro largely spoke in lengthy stream of consciousness monologues with scattered ideas, esoteric reflections, philosophical divagations and comments. He talked about just about everything—the recent crisis with Trump, the war in Gaza, the conflict in the Catatumbo, attacking his usual political nemeses (Uribe, Enrique Peñalosa etc.) fracking, drug trafficking, cocaine (which he claims is no worse than whisky, and is only illegal because it’s from Latin America), infrastructure and public utilities projects, artwork in the room, Simón Bolívar (one of his models), Santander (who he has a dim view of), the M-19, revolutions, reggaetón (a form of art), brothels (and Pablo Neruda and revolutionaries), eroticism, the loss of Panama in 1903, feminism, Gabriel García Márquez and, of course, colonel Aureliano Buendía.
The cabinet vs. Sarabia and Benedetti
The livestreamed meeting revealed a dysfunctional and divided cabinet. It confirmed that the left-wing faction of the cabinet deeply opposes and resents the presence in cabinet of Laura Sarabia, the new foreign minister (previously head of the presidential office, Dapre), and Armando Benedetti, her nemesis and the deeply controversial enfant terrible of this administration. It also made clear that Petro sided with Benedetti over the leftist members of his cabinet.
Just a day before the cabinet meeting, Petro promoted Armando Benedetti to chief of staff, a powerful office last held by Sarabia until the Sarabia-Benedetti scandal in June 2023. Benedetti returned to Bogotá last November to serve as senior advisor to the president, leaving behind his boring sinecure as ambassador to the FAO in Rome. Given Benedetti’s reputation as a political opportunist and deceitful, brutish ruffian mastering in the dark arts of politics, along with his long list of scandals (several corruption cases, and charges of domestic violence by his estranged wife), he is unpalatable to several petristas, including several ministers from the most ‘leftist’ group in cabinet. Nearly everyone is convinced that Benedetti can blackmail Petro with the destructive information and deepest secrets about Petro and the 2022 campaign that he supposedly holds.
Last November, eight members of cabinet, including Vice President Francia Márquez, reportedly led a mini-revolt/boycott to protest Benedetti’s return (some of those involved later claimed that they simply ‘asked’ Petro a few questions). Other versions of this cabinet protest last year claimed that the grievances were actually about Laura Sarabia, whose power and influence over the president (as head of the Dapre) had been resented by ‘anti-Sarabia’ elements within the administration for months. The ‘left-wing’ group in the cabinet distrusts both Benedetti and Sarabia in part because they’re both newcomers to petrismo, joining the campaign in 2021-2022. Laura Sarabia, who had apparently fallen out of favour with Petro since late last year, was moved out of Petro’s direct circle and made foreign minister, replacing Luis Gilberto Murillo from January 29.
In this game of musical chairs, Jorge Rojas, a left-wing politician and longtime ally of the president who had hitherto being vice minister of foreign affairs, became director of the Dapre. However, just as the left celebrated Sarabia’s replacement by Rojas, Benedetti came to step on his toes, as chief of staff, with an unclear division of responsibilities between the two men. The report used by the president to evaluate his ministers’ performance was prepared by Benedetti and wasn’t shared with the ministers beforehand, leaving them perplexed and confused about how they were being evaluated.
During the meeting, several cabinet members spoke out against Benedetti and Sarabia. Vice President Francia Márquez, the first to speak after Petro’s initial monologue, told Petro that she respects but doesn’t share his decision to appoint Benedetti and criticized Sarabia’s disrespectful attitude towards her and others. She also insinuated that Sarabia and Benedetti were blackmailing Petro. Francia Márquez took advantage of the broadcast to send several strong messages to Petro: she took issue with Petro’s usual bellicose rhetoric, affirming that she is afraid of weapons; she took a direct shot at Petro’s failing paz total policy by lamenting that people in her community of Suárez (Cauca) tell her that things were better under Duque and, finally, she publicly confirmed that she is relegated from power and distant from the president.
Close to tears, environment minister Susana Muhamad, one of the government’s most successful ministers, emotionally declared that as a feminist and as a woman she could not sit at the cabinet table with Benedetti (but refused to resign). Defending the ‘integrity and dignity’ of the ‘progressive project’ with her two decades of commitment to the cause, Muhamad insisted that Sarabia and Benedetti represent the opposite of the ‘progressive project’.
Social Prosperity Department (DPS) director Gustavo Bolívar, whose antipathy for Benedetti and Sarabia is no secret, solidarized himself with his colleagues and said that Benedetti and Sarabia should instead hold other, less important, offices in the administration. On one of the only occasions she spoke, Sarabia claimed that no one from DPS was present to receive a recent deportation flight. Like in a schoolyard brawl, Bolívar retorted: “Laura is lying.”
Right as he was gently taking issue with Petro’s personnel decisions, Bolívar, a petrista loyalist to the point of sycophancy, also declared his love for Petro: “I love you, President” (yo a usted lo amo, presidente).
Alexander López, the national planning director (DNP), a veteran left-wing politician who served 22 years in Congress, stated that Benedetti and Sarabia don’t represent them (the left) and reiterated that people from ‘the establishment’ should not hold strategic positions in the administration. He specifically protested how Sarabia (in the past) and now Benedetti ‘monopolized’ the president’s agenda.
The rather hermetic Augusto Rodríguez, a M-19 veteran and director of the National Protection Unit (UNP), admitted that he had sounded the alarm when Benedetti joined the campaign. Referring to Petro’s accusations of ministers having ‘parallel agendas’, Rodríguez commented that there are agendas “that are perceived to have taken the path of corruption.” Since last summer, Rodríguez had been seen as the unofficial ‘leader’ of the anti-Sarabia group within the administration, suspected of spreading stories that her entourage is corrupt and draws personal profit from her position in government (her brother and an advisor have been accused of allegedly directing public contracts). During the cabinet meeting, Rodríguez revealed, on air, Benedetti’s alleged connections to ‘Papá Pitufo’, the czar of contraband, who tried to infiltrate the 2022 campaign by giving 500 million pesos (via Xavier Vendrell, a mysterious Catalan nationalist businessman who was given citizenship by Petro). ‘Papá Pitufo’, by his real name Diego Marín, is the ‘star’ of the latest dirty money scandal to hit the government. Benedetti filed a criminal complaint against Rodríguez for his comments.
In response to these public declarations of dissent, an annoyed Petro took to Benedetti’s defence. He attacked ‘sectarianism’, argued that everyone deserves a ‘second chance’ and warned against assuming the power to ‘judge’ individuals. To justify Benedetti’s presence at his side, he claimed that Benedetti “has a kind of virtue, which is being crazy” and compared him to Jaime Batemán, a founder and commander of the M-19. Petro admonished Bolívar and López for behaving like candidates rather than government officials.
Following Muhamad’s tearful comments, Petro mansplained feminism, life and love, declaring that there are “feminisms that destroy man” and criticizing feminisms that oppose ‘second chances’, before divagating about the treatment of pregnant women in the M-19.
While he was being attacked, Benedetti remained silent and impassive throughout the lengthy cabinet.
In defending Benedetti and accusing his detractors of being holier-than-thou ‘purists’ or sectarian, Petro distanced himself from the left. He said that his project was not left-wing or socialist, criticized the sectarianism of the left (and their disconnection from regular people) and insisted, not without reason, that he wouldn’t have won with only the votes of the left—that is, without the support of ‘traditional politics’, the likes of ex-uribista and ex-santista Armando Benedetti. Petro estimated the electoral potential of the left at just 1-3 million votes, out of ‘his’ 11+ million votes that he often refers to. The president maintained that ‘purism’, equated with Stalinism, Bolsheviks and Robespierre, would be disastrous for the government (and reminded his ministers that the people is not pure, and that the pure can become impure) and refused to let himself be ‘incarcerated’ in sects.
Incidentally, two days after the cabinet meeting, the Supreme Court announced that Benedetti would stand trial in a corruption case (an old influence peddling case in Fonade dating back to 2016-2017, when he was a senator). Benedetti has always insisted that he’s the victim of a personal vendetta by the magistrate investigating him.
La Silla Vacía reported that Petro took the surprise decision to televise the cabinet meeting (without telling his ministers) to stop a brewing cabinet rebellion in its tracks. Petro learned that a group of eight cabinet ministers, from the left-wing faction, were planning to create an internal bloc against Benedetti’s promotion to chief of staff, with the threat of mass resignation. This group were the targets of Petro’s barbs about parallel agendas, sectarianism, the president not being locked up. Evidently, some of the dissatisfied ministers still spoke out.
The crisis: Resignations
The televised cabinet meeting had good TV ratings, finishing ahead of a popular reality TV show. Speaking at an event a few days later, Petro touted the ratings and the ‘beauty’ of 3.2 million families watching the cabinet, ‘boring as it is’, “watching us discuss their things.” He deplored that ‘sectarianism’ had prevailed and again commented that a majority in 2026 could not be built only with purists. Pleased with himself, Petro has said that he’d broadcast future cabinet meetings—but hasn’t done so yet. Petrista sycophants and influencers praised the livestreamed cabinet as a great example of transparency and openness. They were the only ones who had anything positive to say about the experience. Those who didn’t laugh at all the memes and telenovela-like moments were deeply dispirited and disheartened by the sad spectacle.
The cabinet meeting revealed, in very overt detail, the divisions, personal antagonisms and factionalism within the cabinet. It painted a very sorry picture of a dysfunctional government incapable of doing anything, with a president unable to lead and distrustful of his own ministers. Petro was compared to a toxic boss, humiliating his own cabinet ministers live on national television, all while refusing to take any responsibility for shortcomings. Repeatedly comparing himself to or invoking colonel Aureliano Buendía (a fictional character), Petro’s delusions and bizarre narcissism were on full display (during the Trump crisis, Petro, in a tweet, called himself ‘the last Aureliano’).
The very next day, culture minister Juan David Correa and Jorge Rojas, director of the Dapre, resigned. Rojas, sitting besides Petro during the cabinet meeting, his main role being to manage the time so people other than Petro to speak, said that ‘events’ did not allow him to continue. Rojas later clarified that he’d submitted his resignation before the cabinet meeting, and while he didn’t question the president’s decision to appoint Benedetti, there was no clarity on the issue of his office’s power and he felt that his time at the Dapre was over. Interviewed for María Jimena Duzán’s podcast, Correa, who hadn’t spoken out against Benedetti during the meeting, said that he could not remain part of a cabinet headed by someone (Benedetti) who is accused of mistreating women. In a rather cruel tweet, Petro attacked both Rojas and Correa for lying and not reading the laws. In particular, he attacked Rojas, a loyal ally who had been by his side for years, alleging he “raised much indignity and almost destroyed the government” simply by saying that the head of the presidential office was head of the ministers.
On Sunday Feb. 9, Petro asked (via tweet) for the formal resignations of all ministers and heads of administrative departments, announcing ‘some’ changes to the cabinet to “ensure greater fulfilment” with the government’s program. Just after the cabinet spectacle, Carlos Carillo, the director of the UNGRD, had said that the entire government should present their letters of resignation to the president.
Shortly beforehand, that same day, environment minister Susana Muhamad confirmed, during a live interview, that she had resigned from cabinet. In her letter, dated February 8, she reiterated that she was unable to remain in office for the reasons expressed during the cabinet meeting. Muhamad, one of three ministers in office since the very beginning (Aug. 2022), was among the most effective, competent, diligent and influential ministers, particularly with the success of last year’s COP16 in Cali and international recognition of Colombia’s environmental leadership. Muhamad is from an environmentalist, feminist ‘new left’ and has been close to Petro for years. To a certain extent, given her potential electoral ambitions in 2026, there had been rumours she’d resign—but at a later date.
Very shortly after Petro’s tweet, labour minister Gloria Inés Ramírez announced her irrevocable resignation. She made no direct reference to the events of the past days, but her letter noted “it is clear that violence against women is incompatible with the mandate of the government” and she concluded by citing the late left-wing leader Carlos Gaviria, one of Petro’s rivals earlier in his career, “politics must proceed without sectarianism and ambiguities, which is why I am leaving office.” Ramírez, who had also been in office since 2022, was one of the most successful ministers in the government, with the adoption of the pension reform last June and good progress on the labour reform, thanks in good part to her willingness to reach consensus and make concessions to other parties. Ramírez is from the ‘old school’ left, a prominent member of the Communist Party (somewhat unfairly singled out by Petro as an example of ‘sectarianism’ during the cabinet meeting).
On February 10, interior minister Juan Fernando Cristo followed suit. Cristo had been in office for less than a year, taking the reins of the very ‘political’ ministry last July. Because of a bad flu, he didn’t speak at the cabinet meeting and left early, but took to social media the next morning to express his disagreement with Petro’s decision to broadcast the spectacle and his view that the current cabinet was ‘unsustainable’. Cristo had grown frustrated with the obstacles to implement his plan to accelerate the implementation of the 2016 peace agreement (one of his priorities in joining the government) and Petro’s regular dynamiting of the acuerdo nacional phantasm. Cristo said that he was resigning to participate freely in the political debate, opening the door to a candidacy in 2026 (which he so far denies). Cristo had been expected to resign, but only in March, and had been intending to stay on to oversee the cabinet shuffle due to happen even before the trainwreck cabinet meeting. He had been pushing Petro to (re)open his cabinet with ‘quotas’ for other parties, to negotiate support for the government’s agenda in Congress.
The next day, defence minister Iván Velásquez, the last of the original ministers from 2022, announced his irrevocable resignation. Velásquez had faced heavy criticism because of the deterioration of security and public order in the country, and his resignation came at a bad time, with the war in the Catatumbo since January 2025 (that led the government to declare a state of internal disturbance, the first in over a decade). Velásquez had, despite regular attacks from the opposition and his difficulties in the defence portfolio, held Petro’s trust and survived past cabinet reshuffles. However, during the cabinet meeting, he had a brief fracas with Petro over the situation in El Plateado (Cauca). It is unclear why Velásquez resigned, given that he was not overtly associated with the factional conflicts and that previously didn’t have the intention to resign.
The resignation galore ended on February 12 with that of Alexander López, the national planning director who had been among those vocally opposed to Benedetti and Sarabia on Feb. 4. López had been director of the DNP since February 2024, the first non-economist to head that traditional bastion of Colombian technocracy. López is also one of the leading members (and former president) of the Polo Democrático, one of the major traditional parties of the Colombian left.
With these five ministerial resignations within days, none of Petro’s original ministers from 2022 remain in office—Velásquez, Muhamad and Ramírez being the last surviving original ministers. Petro has had around 45 ministers in just under three years in power, a very high degree of cabinet instability. These five resignations follow three other changes in government in January: the resignation of foreign minister Luis Gilberto Murillo, ICT minister Mauricio Lizcano and transportation minister María Constanza García. Just two months into the new year, there have already been eight ministerial changes.
Re-accommodation: Power dynamics in a pre-electoral year
The chaotic cabinet meeting and the cabinet crisis it precipitated came in the context of attention increasingly shifting towards the 2026 congressional and presidential elections. Petro is term-limited (and, no, despite what right-wingers might claim, he won’t run again regardless) but has made it clear that his political project must be reelected in 2026. That’s going to be an uphill battle considering Petro’s unpopularity, a reinvigorated right-wing opposition and the absence of a strong, unifying candidate on the left (though there’s no shortage of candidates). Given the difficulties Petro and his administration will continue to face in getting their agenda through Congress and/or in implementing their policy, Petro’s focus will be on the 2026 elections—although at the same time, during the cabinet meeting, his complaints about ‘parallel agendas’ revealed a frustration with those ministers who are thinking more about their 2026 ambitions. Last year, Petro pushed for the transformation of the Pacto Histórico from a multiparty coalition to a single united party, as a means to survive and maintain some semblance of left-wing unity in 2026, with parties like Petro’s Colombia Humana and the Polo merging into a single party.
Petro’s attacks on leftist sectarianism and his defence of Benedetti during the infamous cabinet meeting were widely read as support for a frente amplio (broad front) with non-left-wing, ‘traditional’ parties and politicians in 2026, just like Petro welcomed figures from the world of traditional politics (Benedetti, Roy Barreras and others) in 2022.
Cabinet changes were bound to happen regardless of what went down on February 4, forcing a rearrangement of the government as it heads into the final year.
Petro hasn’t yet replaced all the ministers who resigned following the cabinet crisis or announced other changes of his own. On February 12, Petro appointed former Green senator (2018-2022) Antonio Sanguino as labour minister. Sanguino is a petrista Green and close to the political machine of Boyacá governor Carlos Amaya, who has amassed influence, ‘quotas’ and budget as a close ally of the administration. Sanguino’s appointment is the second ‘quota’ for petrista Greens in the government, following the appointment of former Bogotá Green councillor María Fernanda Rojas as the new transportation minister in late January.
On February 19, Petro appointed air force General Pedro Sánchez as the new minister of defence, the first military officer to serve as defence minister since 1991, breaking an uninterrupted tradition of civilian leadership of the defence tradition since the 1991 constitution. Sánchez, who had been serving as the head of the president’s security, is an experienced helicopter pilot who led the rescue operation for the four children lost in the jungle in 2023. He retired from active service following his appointment.
In a new twist to the intrigue, on February 22, W Radio and other media broke the news that Armando Benedetti will become interior minister. The shuffle that sends Benedetti to his most important position yet in this administration also brings back two of his adversaries. Alexander López, who had just resigned from the DNP, would become Petro’s chief of staff. Susana Muhamad, whose resignation from the environment ministry is due to take effect on March 3 once she returns from COP16 negotiations in Rome, would replace López at the DNP. Besides Benedetti’s latest promotion, none of these changes have been officially confirmed by Petro.
This ‘re-accommodation’ has the objective to end the rebellion and crisis within the government, with a tense truce between Benedetti and his adversaries.
The main point of honour for the left-wing faction was removing Benedetti as chief of staff, where he was coordinating all the ministers. Alexander López was willing to back down if Benedetti held another job, besides chief of staff. Muhamad, despite tearfully proclaiming that as a woman and a feminist she couldn’t sit at the same table as Benedetti, had opened the door in media interviews to rethinking her resignation if Benedetti’s initial appointment was reconsidered. López and Augusto Rodríguez continued to pressure Petro from the inside to move Benedetti elsewhere. López, one of the two main leaders of the Polo, allegedly threatened to destroy the Pacto’s unification process by questioning whether the Polo, one of the main components of the coalition, would merge into the new unified party. Rodríguez refused to present his resignation as the other ministers did, challenging Petro to fire him.
At the interior ministry, Benedetti lands on familiar ground: managing relations with Congress and other parties, an area in which he is undoubtedly skilled given his long parliamentary career. However, he’d lose the direct access to Petro and power of coordinating all the ministers (and convening cabinet meetings) he enjoyed as chief of staff—a win for his rivals.
Benedetti would continue Cristo’s idea of giving ministries to the parties, with eyes both on the legislative agenda in Congress and on 2026, privileging the parties closest to petrismo, the Greens and friendly Liberals, without neglecting La U and friendly Conservatives. While Petro is slow to make up his mind, there is room left to give ‘quotas’ to other parties—according to W Radio, La U would obtain the ICT ministry (vacated in January by Mauricio Lizcano), the Conservatives would retain the sports ministry (held since early 2024 by Luz Cristina López) and the Liberals would get the commerce and industry ministry (held by Luis Carlos Reyes, fragilized by scandal).
Since asking for all of his ministers’ resignations on February 9, Petro has kept up the suspense about what his reshuffled cabinet will be like, leaving the administration in limbo. He had a week-long trip to Dubai and Doha the second week of February, and then dithered upon his return home. Only over the last few days have changes been announced.
On February 25, the government announced Patricia Duque as the new sports minister. Patricia Duque was superintendent of residential public services under Santos (2013-2017) and is seen as a ‘quota’ for the Conservatives close to the government in the House. The government also announced Lena Yanina Estrada Añokazi as the new environment minister. Estrada is from the indigenous Uitoto Minɨka people of Amazonas, and has been active in indigenous movements in the region and had been serving as head of the foreign ministry’s diplomatic academy.
Daniel Coronell claimed that the possible new ICT minister may be one Said Lamk, presented as a ‘quota’ of La U and specifically the corrupt Ñoños, former senators Bernardo ‘el Ñoño’ Elías and Musa Besaile. Petro denied the story as a ‘new media lie’.
Gustavo Bolívar, the director of the DPS, himself confirmed that there’s a high probability that he’ll resign to run for president in 2026. La Silla Vacía claims that Jorge Rojas, the very ephemeral head of the Dapre, may replace him.
Petro has accepted energy and mines minister Andrés Camacho’s resignation, allowing him to run for Congress next year, as had been rumoured since last year. He is to be replaced by Edwin Palma, a trade union leader, former president of the largest oil industry workers’ union (USO), who was placed twenty-fifth on the Pacto’s closed list for Senate in 2022. He had served as vice minister of labour until last summer and was a non-independent member of the board of Ecopetrol, the predominantly state-owned oil company.
On February 26, different media outlets reported that Vice President Francia Márquez’s resignation as minister of equality was accepted by the president. Following the cabinet meeting and her frank comments to Petro, it was clear that relations between Petro and her vice president were bad and that the rift between the two had widened. It’s unclear whether Francia Márquez will also resign from the vice presidency (which would open the road for a 2026 candidacy, which does not seem to interest her).
These complex power games and re-accommodations within the government aim to end the open rebellion within cabinet, impose a truce between the warring factions and accommodate potential external allies and key power blocs in this pre-electoral year; maintaining the very fragile unity of the left while attempting to build the frente amplio Petro wants for 2026. A tall order now that we’ve all seen for ourselves just how dysfunctional Petro’s government is and how toxic his leadership style can be.