Colombian Politics and Elections

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I would be interested in hearing about what kind of a preview the municipal and regional elections gives us about the next round of national elections, particularly the congressional elections, like which parties are gaining or losing strength and where.

I've sort of indirectly touched on some these points in my post-mortem of the local elections on Substack. In general, local elections are not a particularly good predictor of the presidential and congressional elections, although they may provide some indications - the success of 'alternative' candidates in 2019 sort of foreshadowed what happened in 2022. They're perhaps a good indicator of congressional elections since the dynamics are sort of similar - traditional political groups, clans and machines are still strong in congressional elections in most places, and those political machines are built on a network of aldermen, councillors, deputies and mayors (some cases, governors) who ensure the success of the machine in the congressional elections. The 2022 congressional elections showed, again, that having an allied governor is a major asset for congressional candidates (quite obvious in Bolivar and Tolima to name two places). Most political clans reaffirmed their power in their regions last year, although some of them confirmed their decline and decay (the Aguilar family in Santander, even the Merheg clan in Risaralda).

It's hard to decipher local election results for many reasons (and getting even harder), so it allows for a game of conflicting narratives and spin where everyone is a winner. In terms of municipalities won, calculated by Demos-UR, the traditional/neo-traditional parties (Liberal, Conservatives, La U, CR) won, again, the most mayors by far, although most of them in coalition with other parties. Uribismo (CD) remains much weaker at the local level but lost a fair amount of municipalities compared to 2019, although this is in part due to more parties/candidates wanting to ally with them as the governing party in 2019. CR also lost a fair amount of ground from 2019.

Usually the best indicator of party strength locally is the local council elections, although this is getting more muddled with the number of coalition lists. The Liberals remained the largest party nationally with around 12% of the vote, followed by the Conservatives (9%), Greens (7%), CD (7%), CR (7%) and La U (6.5%). The Pacto's numbers are nearly impossible to calculate because the Pacto as a coalition only ran as such in 47 (out of 1,000+) municipalities and its component parties competed against each other, but calculations by Demos-UR to take into account the Pacto (including any coalition which is made up by parties which are all Pacto members nationally) concluded that Pacto coalition lists won slightly under 1 million votes (this goes up to 3 million votes if you include all Pacto member parties).

For 2026, I think it's too early to predict the congressional elections at all, given that it will depend on a lot of things that are still unknown - like individual candidates (for example, the loathsome hard-right 'Green' YouTuber senator Jota Pe Hernandez was the party's top vote-getting candidate in 2022, out of nowhere, with 190,000 votes, and one suspects that his vote will only grow more in 2026 given that he's drawn attention to himself as a leading opponent to Petro and bargain-bin Bukele imitator).

Then there's the matter that, as things currently stand, the Pacto cannot legally run as a coalition list for Senate anymore in 2026 (only parties which together won less than 15% in the last election can do so), hence why Petro and a lot of leading national Pacto figures are pushing to merge the Pacto's component parties or adopt an electoral reform that'd allow them to run as a coalition again (there is appetite in the other parties to raise the coalition-forming threshold but it's unpopular in public opinion because it looks like self-serving grubby politicking) but I don't see an electoral reform being adopted by 2026. Some Pacto parties are willing to entertain the idea of a merger (though it'd mean losing the cherished party status they all hold, it'd be their best way to ensure their survival), but others most definitely are not.

Finally, over the past 2 years, there's been an uncontrolled proliferation in the number of parties, from 22 legally recognized at the time of the 2022 elections to 37 now, largely because the CNE has decided that the constitution no longer applies to them and they've given a party to whoever asks for one. All of them will have their survival on the line (they must win over 3% nationally in the Senate election to retain party status... unless the CNE decides otherwise?), and most of them will likely turn to coalition lists as their way to survive, but all this will further muddle things. Of the new parties, Nuevo Liberalismo will try again (after their big disappointment in 2022) and, with Galán in Bogotá, they could now stand a much better chance of crossing the threshold. Fico's Creemos will likely want to prove itself, after their huge success in Medellín last year, and Antioquia alone could put them well on their way to crossing the threshold. One suspects Daniel Quintero's Independientes and Carlos Caicedo's Fuerza Ciudadana will also want to prove themselves on their own, particularly if both men are presidential candidates (Caicedo's crew already ran their own Senate list in 2022 and came the closest to the 3% threshold).

Also just a question that probably doesn't need to be covered on substack. There are no independents elected to congress, is that because the rules don't allow for that or because candidates who run as independents for the national legislature basically always lose, like in North America.

This is a complicated question, but it ultimately boils down in good part to a difference in terminology used.

What would usually be considered independents in other countries are formally known in Colombia as grupos significativos de ciudadanos (GSC) or candidatos / movimientos cívicos (civic candidates/movements). In formal legal reading, GSCs are seen not as permanent organizations but as means for nominating lists or candidates in a given electoral contest, although in practice GSCs may also be unrecognized parties/movements seeking ballot access and recognition as a political party (this is originally how the CD became a recognized party in 2014).

Candidates obtain ballot access either by being nominated by a legally recognized political party or as a GSC collecting a certain number of signatures -- a fifth (20%) of the result of dividing the number of registered voters in the given jurisdiction by the number of seats to be filled, but in no case more than 50,000 signatures (for presidential elections, since 2005, signature requirements are 3% of valid votes in the previous election, which meant over 580,000 signatures in 2022). Not quite as easy as in Canada or some parts of the US, but not unreasonably high numbers, particularly for the Senate (50,000). Those ballot access requirements for GSCs haven't been amended since the law on the matter was adopted in 1994, unlike the requirements for recognition as a political party which are significantly more complicated since 2003 than it was in the 90s.

In recent national and local elections, there's been a significant increase in the number of GSCs being registered (and those successfully meeting signature requirements). In part because some candidates who aren't 'independents' at all have been opportunistically seeking ballot access via signatures to pose as 'independents' without political affiliations - most famously Vargas Lleras in 2018. On top of that, because candidates via signatures may start collecting them up to a year before the election, it allows candidates to start campaigning early, with weak and lax oversight of candidate spending and advertising during this period. Somewhat contradictorily, the law also allows GSCs who have obtained ballot access to form coalitions with parties (there were a lot of examples of that last year).

In 2022, there were five Senate lists which had gotten on the ballot via signatures and none of them passed the threshold. By my count, there were four seats (or three lists) in the House which went to lists which had gotten on the ballots in their departments via signatures, but all three of those movements have since obtained legal party status (in two cases even though they didn't meet the constitutional requirements, courtesy of the CNE's recent vagaries). Not sure if any of those count as independents, but obviously a PR electoral system in multi-member constituencies makes it more difficult to have lone independents contest.

On that note, Álvaro Uribe was, technically, elected (and re-elected) as an independent: his ballot label, Primero Colombia, was never transformed into a political party and was dormant in between his two elections.

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I'd be interested in hearing a bit about Petro's environmental record (beyond the hippos!). Lula's progress on deforestation in Brazil is quite well known - has Petro achieved anything similar? I also know that late-term Duque fancied himself a bit of an environmentalist, but I'm not sure how much of that made its way into concrete achievements.

Quite naturally, Petro's environmental policy is very heavy on the rhetoric, making the climate emergency and his anti-extractivist ideas the centrepoint of the bulk of his speeches before international audiences at the UN, COP, Davos and the like, often with a catastrophist tone. It's won him the praise of a lot of climate activists, most notably Mark Ruffalo (which Petro wasted no time in publicizing), and has put Colombia at the forefront of the 'anti-oil' movement globally. Colombia has joined the High Ambition Coalition, committed money for the protection of the Amazon, signed on to the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty initiative, joined with France and Kenya to launch an 'expert review on debt, nature and climate'.

A lot of Petro's environmental ideas are very ambitious and require multilateral, global efforts, which has obviously been a lot more difficult. Petro's big idea has been 'debt-for-climate action' swaps, which he's discussed at most international fora, but so far the idea has not really convinced rich countries and has not been translated into something tangible. In addition, Petro's anti-extractivist/anti-oil rhetoric is too radical for a lot of countries and alienates potential allies, including Lula (see here) (in another example of Petro's radical speeches backfiring, his COP28 speech bizarrely drawing parallels between the climate crisis, Gaza and Nazis/Hitler alienated a lot of countries and earned a public rebuke from the German foreign ministry).

One symbolic success at the international level is that Colombia will host the COP16 on biodiversity this year, in Bogotá or Cali.

At the domestic level, Petro's national development plan (PND) was quite historic and transformative because it placed the environment, climate change, conservation and water at the centre of national planning strategy, notably with the idea of territorial planning around water, and includes several important articles relating to the environment and conservation. However, there's little in it about deforestation and the stated objective is only to reduce deforestation by 20% from 2021 by 2026. What is more ambitious is the objective to restore 753,000 hectares of forests by 2026.

An early success for the government has been deforestation numbers. In 2022, deforestation fell by 20% and initial numbers for the first nine months of 2023 fell by 70% compared to the previous year (these good numbers are fragile and the impact of El Niño and heavy droughts in 2024 could worsen things). Deforestation numbers during Duque's term were bad (higher than the previous four-year period), with increases in 2020 and 2021. The government has abandoned Duque's largely failed militaristic response to deforestation (Operation Artemis), which was in line with Duque's general ideological mindset and the premise that deforestation is primarily caused by illegal drug crops, illegal mining and armed groups (rather than agroindustry and large-scale cattle raising), in favour of payments to local families for 'environmental services' and forest conservation work in select Amazonian municipalities (this program existed before but the administration has made it the centrepiece of its policy).

The government also seems to be giving itself the means for its ambitions, which is often a major problem in Colombian public policy. The PND overhauled a big 'fund for life and biodiversity' which will be endowed with significant financial means (equivalent, in 2024, to almost the entire budget of the environment ministry) and used to fund various environmental, climate resilience, conservation, biodiversity etc. projects, including the payments to families to fight deforestation.

The government, if it is able to maintain progress in the deceleration of deforestation and meet its objectives in restoring forests, then it could leave a positive legacy by 2026 (in addition to having secured congressional ratification of the Escazú agreement in 2022). It's helped out by the fact that the environment minister, Susana Muhamad, is quite competent and is one of the few ministers who Petro isn't frustrated with. This will stand in contrast to the closely-related issue of energy transition, which is a mess and where the government's legacy will be far less impressive.

At the same time, at various moments Petro's environmentalism comes into contradiction with Petro's galaxy brain ideas. Like that time last November when Petro tweeted a map with three proposed railway lines through the Chocó 'complementary to the Panama Canal' (in reality three diagonal lines probably drawn on MS Paint) including through mountains, rainforest and the Darién Gap. Or, more recently, with the government approving a controversial expansion of a coast guard station and military radar station on Gorgona Island, which has been a national park since 1984, despite opposition from the local communities and environmentalists. Or now, with the agriculture minister pissing off environmentalists and animal rights groups by saying that a 2021 decree banning fishing for sharks and sea rays is 'racist' and for yuppies and posh snobs.

The environment was probably one of the few issues, along with immigration, where Duque's record isn't absolutely terrible. He did commit Colombia to reduce GHG emissions by 51% by 2030 and carbon-neutrality by 2050, had climate action and energy transition laws adopted in 2021 and increased the renewable energy generation capacity by 25%. On the other hand, as black marks to his record, his failed and misguided use-the-army-to-fight-deforestation policy and his unwillingness to spend any political capital to convince his own coalition to ratify the Escazú agreement.

The other thing is agrarian reform. I remember a few people mentioning this at the beginning of the term, but not a lot has been heard about it since - what is the plan? Is such a reform already a non-starter due to Petro's unpopularity?

Agrarian reform is one issue where Petro wants to go quickly but is extremely frustrated by the slow progress and various difficulties, and is lashing out at his agriculture minister and bureaucrats accused of blocking his reforms.

For good reason, Petro often presents his agrarian reform goals as implementing the first chapter of the 2016 peace agreement (comprehensive rural reform), particularly point 1.1 with the land fund - aiming to distribute 3 million hectares of land over 12 years - and the formalization of 7 million hectares of small and medium rural properties with legitimate owners lacking land titles. Very little progress has been made on those points, largely courtesy of Duque's ideological opposition to any sort of serious agrarian reform. The peace agreement, in point 1.1, lays out that the land to be redistributed will be lands recovered in favour of the state (improperly occupied public lands), from the delimitation and update of the forest reserve, acquired via judicial asset forfeiture (extinción de dominio), unexploited lands recovered by administrative asset forfeiture, lands bought or expropriated (with compensation) for reasons of social interest and public utility as laid out by existing legislation (Law 160 of 1994) or lands donated.

Because the word 'expropriation' is basically taboo in Colombia, even though it's in the constitution and the law since 1936, Petro was forced to kneecap his own reform by signing, during his 2022 campaign, a notarized promise (!) that agrarian reform would be done without expropriation.

Petro has repeatedly complained, not without reason, that the peace agreement's rural reform has not been fulfilled or implemented, and he has recently admitted that he will not be able to meet his initial goal of distributing 3 million hectares of land and has cut that goal down by half to 1.5 million hectares. Even that lower objective will be very hard to meet.

The government has tried to carry out its agrarian reform primarily by seeking to purchase large pieces of land and through various attempts to speed up and facilitate land purchases.

In October 2022, the new government announced an historic, unprecedented agreement to buy, at market values, 3 million hectares of land from Fedegán, the national cattle ranchers' federation, for the land fund. Fedegán, the powerful and ultra-conservative cattle ranchers' lobby led by José Félix Lafaurie (the husband of far-right senator María Fernanda Cabal), have long been vehement opponents of 'expropriatory agrarian reform' and defenders of the 'right to private property', and it had strongly opposed the 2016 peace agreement. Cattle ranchers, protected by Fedegán, and with ties to paramilitary groups, played a very big role in the mass dispossession of land (the agrarian counter-reform) during the conflict. This deal came with a huge price tag, estimated at up to 60 trillion pesos by Petro ($15.3 billion) and was criticized by economists (and others who reminded of the role of cattle ranching in mass dispossession). Since then, however, progress has been extremely slow. The government complained that the land offered was unproductive or of otherwise little use for productive agriculture, while Fedegán has criticized the government's other agrarian reform measures, though in September 2023 they reaffirmed their agreement. Fedegán says that they have offered over 500,000 ha of land, but only a tiny percentage of that has actually been purchased by the government so far (2,300 ha by summer 2023).

Another way that the government has used to distribute land is via lands seized and administered by the SAE, the public entity in charge of administering the proceeds of asset forfeiture. With great pomp and ceremony, Petro has held events giving these properties, often of high symbolic value (one in Córdoba used to belong to one of the Castaño brothers) to landless peasants.

The government has increased the budget of the agriculture sector to record levels - a 125% increase in the 2024 budget compared to the 2023 budget. Given where Colombia is starting off from, however, agrarian reform is an extremely costly project and even the current budget is very much insufficient.

Buying land is a very long, complicated, expensive and excruciatingly slow process (here is a good explanation) and Petro is impatient. Given this, the government has been trying to find various other ways to speed up procedures for land purchase. In the end, the government managed to secure the inclusion of several articles in the PND, notably article 61, which includes several measures to 'facilitate and dynamize land purchase processes by voluntary offer'. This includes a controversial section providing for the 'identification, prioritization and purchase of land', empowering the government to identify and prioritize certain tracts of land and then proceed to negotiate their purchase and, if the offer is not accepted, the 'voluntary alienation' by the owner of the area that's unused. The opposition cried out 'expropriation' and a threat to private property, when the problem with this section is that it's shoddily written in a way that allows for confusion and misinterpretations (deliberate or not).

In addition to this article, the government was ultimately unsuccessful in including another, even more controversial proposal, known as 'express expropriation', which would have allowed for the expedited expropriation (without going through the current procedure in the law) of properties declared to be of public utility or social interest, compensated at the property assessment value (much lower than market values). Petro twiced tried to get this proposal included in the PND, and was unsuccessful both times (the first time because his then agriculture minister, the experienced liberal technocrat Cecilia López, was opposed and threatened to resign). In August, the government tried to sneakily revive a different kind of 'express expropriation' through the back door, via a draft decree published by the agriculture ministry to regulate article 61 of the PND. The draft decree created a new cause for administrative asset forfeiture for not fulfilling the 'social and/or ecological utility' of the property (different from expropriation and is a legacy of the 1936 agrarian reform): if the owners do not attend to or violate the regulations for 'protection areas for food production declared by the ministry of agriculture' (a new type of land use created by the PND). For good reason, this was widely denounced as a deceitful and likely illegal attempt to pass via decree the 'express expropriation' they couldn't adopt by law.

The PND also reactivated the national system for agrarian reform (already been created by Law 160 of 1994 but left dormant), intended to be a system to coordinate the actions of different ministries and agencies in the agricultural sector--stuff like access to loans, technical support, infrastructure, public services. This is the other, eternal, problem of agrarian reform in Colombia: even if the state is able to give land to landless peasants, it often abandons them to their fate, unable (unwilling to provide them with the support and infrastructure that allows to launch sustainable productive projects on the land. Petro hasn't done much better than his predecessors here.

The other important part of the peace agreement's chapter on rural reform is the update of the multi-purpose cadastre, to provide the government with information and data about the land in the countryside (the government knows very little about land tenure etc. because the cadastre is so outdated) and to properly assess land value so that rural property taxes (extremely low in Colombia) are progressive and big properties pay more. Duque did make some progress here (but was steadfastly opposed to using it to increase property taxes on big properties), and boasted that his administration updated cadastral information for 44.5 million hectares, or 39% of national territory, but only 9.6% of municipalities had updated cadastres as of 2023. Petro's PND puts significant emphasis on cadastral update, with very ambitious targets, and creates a 'territory administration system' that'd consolidate all information related to land and property in the country.

More contentiously, the government also wants to modify local property taxation (as a result of the cadastral update) and presented a bill in November 2023. The media, including reputable sources like El Tiempo, falsely titled that the government would increase property taxes by 300%, when in reality (a) the national government can't set property tax rates and (b) the bill doesn't do exactly that. The government's proposal would set limits on property tax increases following updated property assessments and that increases in property taxes are progressive in accordance with the value of the property, economic use or land use of the property. Only the highest valued urban and rural properties, worth over 650 million pesos, could be charged up to three times what they paid the previous year. The government calculated that over 95% of rural and urban properties would benefit from a limit of 50% of the previous year's assessment.

The government did score two major legislative victories on agrarian issues in 2023: Congress adopted constitutional amendments creating a rural and agrarian jurisdiction (new courts responsible for resolving disputes over land tenure and property etc.) and recognizing campesinos as subject of rights and special protection.

Thus far, progress towards Petro's stated targets has been very slow and the government has tried to present data in misleading or confusing ways to give false impressions. Last summer, the director of the ANT (the agency in charge of rural properties and buying land for the reform) was found to have falsely claimed that the government had formalized 1 million hectares of land, by misreporting information - the Petro administration had only formalized 120,900 ha of land, and over 690,000 ha had been effectively formalized prior to August 2022 and were just missing some final steps. He was reprimanded by the agriculture minister. The agriculture ministry has since published its own 'counter':



This is still confusing and misleading, in part because it mixes formalizing property and acquiring property into a single 'land managed' number. This 'counter' also hasn't kept the government from misleadingly claiming that they had bought 230,000 hectares of land in the first edition of the government's official newspaper that Petro launched this month.

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I wrote this last week about the ongoing slow burn crisis surrounding the election of the next attorney general.

To summarize:

AG Francisco Barbosa's term expired on February 13. The Supreme Court has, to this date, not yet elected his replacement from the list of three women nominated by Petro several months ago - the Supreme Court has met twice this year, on January 25 and February 8, and both times no candidate came close to the two-thirds majority (16 out 23) required to be elected. It will meet again on February 22.

Barbosa, Iván Duque's best friend in university, will have been an absolutely catastrophic attorney general - until August 2022, he obediently carried Duque's water, until suddenly discovering the separation of powers and checks and balances once Petro was elected, at which point Barbosa used his office to behave more as an opposition politician with higher ambitions chasing media soundbites by getting into dumb fights with Petro (who, of course, reciprocated because Petro is Petro)--this year, Barbosa compared Petro to Pablo Escobar, while Petro accused Barbosa of sedition. Barbosa is also an insanely narcissistic man who proclaimed himself as the best AG in history and the smartest man in his generation, and used the Fiscalía to build his own brand and market himself, most recently using public money to print an 11-volume hagiographic series about his 'work' or having commemorative plaques in his honour installed (even though that is illegal).

The context is tense because the Fiscalía is currently handling two very explosive and highly political cases against Petro's son Nicolás and Laura Sarabia (Petro's trusted confidante), the former being closely connected to broader investigations into campaign finance irregularities in Petro's 2022 campaign. As his parting gift, Barbosa conveniently brought this case back into the headlines, desperate to extract more information out of the president's son and to collect whatever information he could about campaign irregularities to use against Petro. The prosecutor in the Nicolás Petro case announced that they would file additional charges and seek a new arrest warrant, an unusual announcement because the next court date isn't until April. Then, in early February, through Semana, the Fiscalía announced that they would file charges against Ricardo Roa, Petro's campaign manager and now president of Ecopetrol, and others, in relation to an irregular 500 million peso donation from the teachers' union Fecode to the Petro campaign through Petro's party Colombia Humana in 2022 (union and corporate contributions to presidential campaigns are banned but they can contribute to political parties, a strategem widely used in the past to covertly receive corporate or union contributions via political parties). Petro went absolutely ballistic with this and posted a long rant - which he also translated to Italian, French and Arabic - warning of an institutional breakdown (ruptura institucional) aimed at overthrowing him because the 'mafias' don't want to lose control of the Fiscalía now that he has presented 'three decent women' to be AG.

Barbosa's deputy, Martha Mancera, became interim AG on February 12. Mancera is, unlike Barbosa, a career prosecutor. It isn't unusual for there to be an interim period - there's always been one since 2009. Mancera is, however, quite controversial, implicated in several murky scandals: notably she's alleged of having covered up the drug trafficking activities of the head of the CTI (the Fiscalía's investigations and judicial police division) in Buenaventura and went after two agents who reported these accusations (there are now competing versions that the agents were themselves involved in drug trafficking activities by falsifying documents and reports to pose as undercover agents).

Incited by Petro, Fecode and the unions organized a large popular mobilization/protest on Feb. 8 (coinciding with the Court's session), with Petro's more or less open endorsement (even though he denied being the organizer). The protests started peacefully in front of the Fiscalía but moved downtown, to the Palace of Justice, when protesters heard that the Court had failed to elect anyone. Some hotheads tried to force their way in to the building, but were held back by other protesters, and some hours later the protesters blocked all three parking exits and prevented magistrates from leaving the building. The media, notably right-wing yellow press Semana, began somewhat dishonestly ratcheting up tensions by titling that the Court and the magistrates were 'besieged' by a riotous mob and drew comparisons to the 1985 Palace of Justice siege by the M-19 (but protesters carrying M-19 flags to a protest in front of the Palace of Justice was also not a very smart move), even though such comparisons were obviously very exaggerated (and probably insulting to the memory of those who died in 1985). Nevertheless, the situation was still quite tense, and Petro ordered the police to act against those who were blocking the movements of the magistrates while trying to wash his hands of the crisis that he had himself created and claiming that that the unrest and blockade had been the product of 'infiltrators'. The police (including the riot police squadron Esmad), on the president's orders, dispersed the protesters using tear gas and the situation was resolved relatively quickly, and the dispersal of protesters was quick and smooth.

Petro incited the protests, inflaming his base with the idea of ruptura institucional, but once they got out of hand, he quickly sought to distance himself from them and was ultimately forced to send out riot police to disperse the protests that he had instigated. While on the night of Feb. 8, Petro sought to take a safe distance from the protests, by the next day Petro started furiously tweeting against the 'dishonest' media coverage and its 'mass manipulation', circling back to his usual refrain that it's all part of a far-right plot to destroy him. Petristas have claimed that the blockades were caused by infiltrators or deliberately staged by the media to generate disinformation.

On the other hand, for the opposition, Feb. 8 has become Colombia's January 6 and final proof that Petro is a danger to democracy and the institutions. The Supreme Court, which can't be bothered to do its job but which was eager to jump on the news cycle, joined the chorus by denouncing the 'siege' and illegal, violent blockade, claiming that the lives and physical integrity of employees, judges and journalists were threatened (there is little to no evidence to back this up: the police commander was able to walk over there with no escort that afternoon).

It is quite clear to any sane person that the Supreme Court should do its job and elect an AG without delay. The OAS, UN and IACHR have also made statements calling on the Supreme Court to elect an AG without delay. However, right-wingers have become even more unhinged and called the OAS/UN/IACHR's comments as horrendous violations of sovereignty and attacks on Colombia's democratic institutions and judicial independence (which is absolutely hilarious hypocrisy when you know about Uribe's attacks on judicial independence and the very same Supreme Court during his second term!). Uribe's former vice president Pacho Santos (who seems to have gone mad) has said that he'd tell the UN/IACHR to f)(ck off and go to hell, which is particularly nice timing given that Nicolás Maduro has told the UN to do just that in Venezuela (further proof that chavismo and uribismo have a lot in common). Also for whatever reason a few uribista congressmen went to Washington DC, apparently to meet with the OAS, after Pacto congressmen did the same before them (and Barbosa also went to Washington in January to pretend that the US DOJ had given Mancera their full support).

In unrelated news, the sports minister Astrid Rodríguez formally resigned, in time to avoid a likely vote of no confidence in the Senate, after Barranquilla was stripped of hosting rights for the 2027 Pan Am Games. A cabinet shuffle of significant importance appears increasingly likely in the coming weeks.

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Laura Sarabia, the most powerful woman in Petro's government / his trusted right-hand woman (chief of staff until June 2023), will be promoted to director of the administrative department of the presidency (Dapre), the presidential office. So in about nine months she's come back to where she originally was, at the heart of the presidency, before Petro was compelled to temporarily remove her from government following the nanny polygraph/wiretap scandal in May 2023. That case against her is still chugging along, but so far she hasn't had much reason to worry about it, given that there is little damaging and incriminating evidence to sink her. As soon as it was politically feasible (in September 2023), Petro had her return to government, as head of the Social Prosperity Department (DPS), the agency in charge of most government social programs. But given her connections to Petro, her actual work far exceeded her official duties with the DPS: most notably, last week, she accompanied Petro to the Munich Security Conference. As head of the Dapre, she'll essentially be Petro's chief of staff again and will be tasked with bringing order and direction back to Petro's presidential office.

At the same time, Sarabia's former mentor-turned-enemy, the temperamental and unpredictable Armando Benedetti, is now in Rome as the new ambassador to the FAO, a job recreated just for him by Petro, as an insurance policy for Petro against Benedetti's blackmail and a protection for Benedetti against his judicial problems.

Her arrival means that the current director, the old Green apparatchik Carlos Ramón González, could be moved to a ministry (sports?), which would quell some Greens' restlesness and dissatisfaction over their lack of 'political representation' in cabinet. But there have also been reports that Petro is looking to offer sports or another portfolio to a friendly Conservative 'quota' who could help improve relations with Conservatives in Congress, just as the make-or-break congressional session for the healthcare reform gets underway.

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New post about various current news topics here.

In a continuation of the slow drip shuffle, Luz Cristina López Trejos was appointed as the new sports minister. She came recommended by Conservative representatives including Cesar rep. Ape Cuello, one of the longest-serving and most influential members in the Conservatives' lower house caucus. This is a way to give back and thank the Conservatives in the House for their implicit, covert support to the government's agenda and a sign that Petro is willing to give 'quotas' to parties (or congressmen) in exchange for their support. This is part of Petro's strategy to secure congressional support by dealing directly with individual congressmen, bypassing party leaders, or, in other words, trying to divide and conquer parties by undermining their leaderships and 'unity'. Conservative president Efraín 'Fincho' Cepeda, a skilled and very seasoned politician (he's been in the Senate since 1991), understood this and staged a show of force: he resigned as party leader, confident that his majorities on the party exec would reject it, as it did, unanimously, reconfirming him as party leader and endorsing his positions (opposition to the healthcare reform and distance from the government, with no bureaucratic participation), while sending a clear warning to any potential dissidents that disobedience would be punished as necessary. This was a blow to the government, but only time will tell how the Conservatives in Congress will behave with the government this year (an issue of great importance, as the Conservatives will hold the Senate presidency from July, with the likely man being Cepeda).

With Sarabia at Dapre, her predecessor Carlos Ramón González was moved to head the DNI, the intelligency agency. The DNP (planning department), the traditional citadel of Colombian technocracy, had been vacant since Jorge Iván González resigned/was pushed out in early February because of his worsening relations with Petro, and has been replaced by former Pacto/Polo senator Alexander López, a veteran leftist congressman. López is a very political choice for a department which has almost always been headed by technocrats/economists (he is, in fact, the first non-economist to be head of the DNP in a very long time, and the first more 'political' figure since Simón Gaviria under Santos). This completes Petro's purge of the technocrats in senior offices, as Petro has become even more deeply distrustful of technocrats and blames them for the government's inertia and claims that they are blocking political decisions. Jorge Iván González was the last surviving member of the 'centrist-liberal technocrats' faction in Petro's original cabinet from August 2022, after the likes of Ocampo etc. were dumped last spring. In the meantime, Sarabia's old job at the DPS remains vacant, and given the budget and importance of that department (it manages social programs), we can expect a political figure - a recent rumour suggested Esteban Restrepo, who was former Medellín mayor Daniel Quintero's gubernatorial candidate in Antioquia last fall...

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Two new polls show a slight uptick in Petro's approvals:

Invamer: 58% (-8) / 35% (+9), vs. early December
Cifras & Conceptos: 54% (-5) / 42% (+7), vs. November

It's hard to tell where this is coming from, because early 2024 has not been particularly great for Petro or the government, though perhaps the scandals and controversies so far this year are of interest only to political journalists, overblown or of little interest to the general public. 

Invamer also has approval ratings for the new mayors:

Galán (Bogotá): 54 / 24
Fico (Medellín): 76 / 17
Eder (Cali): 64 / 21
Char (Barranquilla): 74 / 25
Beltrán (Bucaramanga): 61 / 28

Honeymoons for all in early days, but a few things stand out to me: Galán's disapprovals are low but his approvals are not particularly high, so it's a rather modest honeymoon and one that could be short-lived (also supporting this hypothesis is that pessimism remains very high in another question about things improving or worsening); Char's approval ratings are quite weak for him (!), so used to stratospheric 80-90% approvals - 25% is the highest disapproval he's ever had on this poll in any of his terms; Eder in Cali has a solid honeymoon to start off with.

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Former Pacto senator and last year's failed Bogotá mayoral candidate Gustavo Bolívar will be the next director of the DPS. Another political appointment and political reward for a close ally/loyalist of the president. Bolívar is an author and telenovela screenwriter by trade, and has no administrative experience managing a major government agency and no expertise on anti-poverty policies (the DPS administers major social programs like CCTs for low-income families and youth), but both he and Petro have defended the appointment by saying that he will fight corruption and be a 'guarantee of transparency' because 'expertise is learned, honesty is not'. He has also said that, just like when he was senator, he will donate his salary. The comments on fighting corruption are probably a thinly veiled reference to the corrupt political uses of the DPS under Duque being revealed in an ongoing corruption investigation (which has one CD senator, Ciro Ramírez, in jail, and Duque's former DPS director Pierre García facing charges).

Bolívar's very straightforward tone, radical/extremist reputation and his loyalty to Petro won't help allay suspicions that the government wants to use its revamped social programs, managed by the DPS, for clientelistic electoral purposes.

Petro also appointed former Bogotá city councillor Carlos Carrillo as the new director of the UNGRD (the emergency management agency), replacing Olmedo López, who was fired one day after the presidential administration itself, via Petro's transparency secretary, denounced him to prosecutors for a corruption scandal (cost overruns in the contracting of water trucks for La Guajira). Once again, it's a reward for a political ally (who was a bit bitter over the way he was passed over for the mayoral nomination in Bogotá and later for a spot on the Pacto list for council), despite not having any particular experience on the subject matter (much like his disgraced predecessor).

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I will have more to say later, but Petro just had some meltdown (again) and is now raising the possiblity of a constituent assembly "if the current constitution cannot be applied" (read: my government is too incompetent to even rename the air force properly*). This likely stems from the fact that his healthcare reform is in death throes in the Senate -- nine of the fourteen senators on the seventh commission have announced that they will support a proposal to kill the bill, this came as a sudden and unexpected blow to the government which is now both refusing to withdraw the bill but also increasingly desperate in their strategies to save it. It has survived in extremis before but this seems like the final nail in the coffin.

This constituent assembly will not happen, because the steps to get there are long and complicated (nobody in Petro's government has read the current constitution so they don't know this) but this will just fuel/prove correct the right's castrochavista nightmares and everyone else's concerns about his erratic, mercurial bargain-bin populistic strongman delusions. Petro is going to waste the remaining two and a bit years of his term in pointless self-victimizations, Twitter fights, delusional visions, demagoguery and populist speeches blaming everyone for his own incompetence and inability to govern.

Also crazy old man Rodolfo Hernández was convicted of corruption in the trash collection contract scandal. At the trial, he announced that he has terminal cancer, obviously very sad.

Somehow, Sergio Fajardo and Jorge Enrique Robledo were correct to vote blank in 2022 but in the most annoying way possible (particularly Robledo).

* the Constitutional Court yesterday struck down a law that renamed the air force to 'aerospace force' because the name 'air force' is in the constitution so it can't be changed by a regular law. nice job team.

Also, the Supreme Court finally elected Luz Adriana Camargo as attorney general. Camargo has probably the finest resume and professional background of any recent attorney general (certainly better than the past two!), as a criminal lawyer who has been prosecutor, assistant magistrate and member of the CICIG in Guatemala and a trajectory in fighting political corruption (investigating parapolítica in Colombia and with CICIG). She is, through her career path since the mid-2000s, very close to defence minister Iván Velásquez, and she will immediately need to prove her independence from him and the administration in the hot potato cases the Fiscalía is handling. Let's see how she does. I'm ready to be disappointed.

[Sadader]

This constituent assembly will not happen, because the steps to get there are long and complicated (nobody in Petro's government has read the current constitution so they don't know this) but this will just fuel/prove correct the right's castrochavista nightmares and everyone else's concerns about his erratic, mercurial bargain-bin populistic strongman delusions. Petro is going to waste the remaining two and a bit years of his term in pointless self-victimizations, Twitter fights, delusional visions, demagoguery and populist speeches blaming everyone for his own incompetence and inability to govern.

https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Colombia_2015
Article 376

By means of an Act approved by the members of both Houses, Congress may direct that the voters participating in the popular balloting decide if a Constituent Assembly should be called with the jurisdiction, term, and makeup that the same law shall determine.

It is understood that the people shall convoke the Assembly, if they approve it by at least one-third of the electoral rolls.

The Assembly must be elected by the direct vote of the citizens through a balloting that may not overlap another. Beginning with the election, the ordinary powers of Congress shall remain suspense while the Constitution is being amended during the term stipulated so that the Assembly may fulfill its functions. The Assembly shall adopt its own rules of procedure.

From TITLE XIII of the constitution. I gather that it requires both chambers of Congress to pass a bill, then the Assembly is called if 1/3rd of voters agree (or is a 1/3rd margin, so 2/rd?), then the representatives are elected and Congress is suspended while they convene. Is that right?

[Flyersfan232]

I will have more to say later, but Petro just had some meltdown (again) and is now raising the possiblity of a constituent assembly "if the current constitution cannot be applied" (read: my government is too incompetent to even rename the air force properly*). This likely stems from the fact that his healthcare reform is in death throes in the Senate -- nine of the fourteen senators on the seventh commission have announced that they will support a proposal to kill the bill, this came as a sudden and unexpected blow to the government which is now both refusing to withdraw the bill but also increasingly desperate in their strategies to save it. It has survived in extremis before but this seems like the final nail in the coffin.

This constituent assembly will not happen, because the steps to get there are long and complicated (nobody in Petro's government has read the current constitution so they don't know this) but this will just fuel/prove correct the right's castrochavista nightmares and everyone else's concerns about his erratic, mercurial bargain-bin populistic strongman delusions. Petro is going to waste the remaining two and a bit years of his term in pointless self-victimizations, Twitter fights, delusional visions, demagoguery and populist speeches blaming everyone for his own incompetence and inability to govern.

Also crazy old man Rodolfo Hernández was convicted of corruption in the trash collection contract scandal. At the trial, he announced that he has terminal cancer, obviously very sad.

Somehow, Sergio Fajardo and Jorge Enrique Robledo were correct to vote blank in 2022 but in the most annoying way possible (particularly Robledo).

* the Constitutional Court yesterday struck down a law that renamed the air force to 'aerospace force' because the name 'air force' is in the constitution so it can't be changed by a regular law. nice job team.

Also, the Supreme Court finally elected Luz Adriana Camargo as attorney general. Camargo has probably the finest resume and professional background of any recent attorney general (certainly better than the past two!), as a criminal lawyer who has been prosecutor, assistant magistrate and member of the CICIG in Guatemala and a trajectory in fighting political corruption (investigating parapolítica in Colombia and with CICIG). She is, through her career path since the mid-2000s, very close to defence minister Iván Velásquez, and she will immediately need to prove her independence from him and the administration in the hot potato cases the Fiscalía is handling. Let's see how she does. I'm ready to be disappointed.

" Petro is going to waste the remaining two and a bit years of his term in pointless self-victimizations, Twitter fights, delusional visions, demagoguery and populist speeches blaming everyone for his own incompetence and inability to govern." so he is basically communist trump

[jimros]

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" Petro is going to waste the remaining two and a bit years of his term in pointless self-victimizations, Twitter fights, delusional visions, demagoguery and populist speeches blaming everyone for his own incompetence and inability to govern." so he is basically communist trump
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They have a lot in common from a personality perspective.

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From TITLE XIII of the constitution. I gather that it requires both chambers of Congress to pass a bill, then the Assembly is called if 1/3rd of voters agree (or is a 1/3rd margin, so 2/rd?), then the representatives are elected and Congress is suspended while they convene. Is that right?

Yes: Congress (with absolute, rather than simple, majority of members required) > mandatory review by the Constitutional Court (only for procedural defects) > referendum to convene the assembly (yes vote must = 1/3 of registered voters, or 13.4+ million votes, more than Petro won in the 2022 runoff) > election of the assembly > Congress' power to reform the constitution suspended during the assembly's term. There's no requirement for the new constitution to be adopted by referendum (the 1991 one wasn't), but it could happen. Congress would also likely be well aware of the precedent of the 1991 constituent assembly revoking the 1990 Congress' term.

The law adopted by Congress would define the jurisdiction (subject matters/topics), term, composition and electoral system for the constituent assembly, and voters in the eventual referendum would also need to vote, separately, to approve the topics that'd be within the assembly's jurisdiction.

In any case, Petro has more or less walked back the actual constituent assembly idea but has at the same time escalated the rhetoric about the 'constituent process'. From Petro's social media posts, speeches and one media interview, it's clear that by 'constituent process' Petro largely means intensifying, accelerating and escalating the popular mobilization/popular agitation in his favour that he has tried, without much success, to stir up since February 2023. He's used the term 'constituyente' to mean just about anything, except 'changing the '91 constitution' (...), under the idea of 'returning power to the people', with the idea being that the people's decisions (as the primary or original constituant) is supreme and must be obeyed by the 'established powers'. This is his biggest, most audacious attempt at galvanizing a large popular agitation in favour of his administration to stage a show of force to other institutions, convinced (wrongly, most likely) that the silent majority/his 2022 electorate remains firmly in lockstep behind him. Petro, in contrast, has been evasive about whether or not he'd ever start the actual constitutional process to convene a constituent assembly (very high chances that he won't).

Petro has mentioned 6, or 9, major issues that he says must be addressed in priority by the 'constituent process' - these are all very major issues (judicial reform, peace and reconciliation, territorial reorganization - modifying departmental and municipal boundaries, implementation of the 2016 peace agreement etc.), but also all things that could be done by way of regular constitutional reforms.

In his 'constituent process' mode, Petro has killed off the old 'national agreement' talk in favour of radical, polarizing, populist rhetoric, in early campaign mode to defend his presidency and seek to ensure his 'progressive' political project's continuity after 2026. Petro's new, more radical, version includes a strong dose of cheap class warfare and heavy attacks against 'the establishment', uribismo, the media (particularly Vicky Dávila), technocrats, 'the oligarchy' and everyone else who he is blaming for not 'letting him govern'.

The main victim of this shift in Petro's tone and behaviour will be, of course, his actual legislative agenda of reforms in Congress - the healthcare reform is dead, after the constituent assembly brouhaha you'd surely expect the pension reform (and forgotten labour reform etc.) to be dead as well. Petro will use his aggressive, belligerent rhetoric to blame everyone else for these failures and to distract attention from the fact that his legislative accomplishments will be very meagre.

Here is my Substack post about the constituent assembly fracas: https://colombiapolelxn.substack.com/p/petros-constituent-assembly-a-divisive.

[Flyersfan232]

From TITLE XIII of the constitution. I gather that it requires both chambers of Congress to pass a bill, then the Assembly is called if 1/3rd of voters agree (or is a 1/3rd margin, so 2/rd?), then the representatives are elected and Congress is suspended while they convene. Is that right?

Yes: Congress (with absolute, rather than simple, majority of members required) > mandatory review by the Constitutional Court (only for procedural defects) > referendum to convene the assembly (yes vote must = 1/3 of registered voters, or 13.4+ million votes, more than Petro won in the 2022 runoff) > election of the assembly > Congress' power to reform the constitution suspended during the assembly's term. There's no requirement for the new constitution to be adopted by referendum (the 1991 one wasn't), but it could happen. Congress would also likely be well aware of the precedent of the 1991 constituent assembly revoking the 1990 Congress' term.

The law adopted by Congress would define the jurisdiction (subject matters/topics), term, composition and electoral system for the constituent assembly, and voters in the eventual referendum would also need to vote, separately, to approve the topics that'd be within the assembly's jurisdiction.

In any case, Petro has more or less walked back the actual constituent assembly idea but has at the same time escalated the rhetoric about the 'constituent process'. From Petro's social media posts, speeches and one media interview, it's clear that by 'constituent process' Petro largely means intensifying, accelerating and escalating the popular mobilization/popular agitation in his favour that he has tried, without much success, to stir up since February 2023. He's used the term 'constituyente' to mean just about anything, except 'changing the '91 constitution' (...), under the idea of 'returning power to the people', with the idea being that the people's decisions (as the primary or original constituant) is supreme and must be obeyed by the 'established powers'. This is his biggest, most audacious attempt at galvanizing a large popular agitation in favour of his administration to stage a show of force to other institutions, convinced (wrongly, most likely) that the silent majority/his 2022 electorate remains firmly in lockstep behind him. Petro, in contrast, has been evasive about whether or not he'd ever start the actual constitutional process to convene a constituent assembly (very high chances that he won't).

Petro has mentioned 6, or 9, major issues that he says must be addressed in priority by the 'constituent process' - these are all very major issues (judicial reform, peace and reconciliation, territorial reorganization - modifying departmental and municipal boundaries, implementation of the 2016 peace agreement etc.), but also all things that could be done by way of regular constitutional reforms.

In his 'constituent process' mode, Petro has killed off the old 'national agreement' talk in favour of radical, polarizing, populist rhetoric, in early campaign mode to defend his presidency and seek to ensure his 'progressive' political project's continuity after 2026. Petro's new, more radical, version includes a strong dose of cheap class warfare and heavy attacks against 'the establishment', uribismo, the media (particularly Vicky Dávila), technocrats, 'the oligarchy' and everyone else who he is blaming for not 'letting him govern'.

The main victim of this shift in Petro's tone and behaviour will be, of course, his actual legislative agenda of reforms in Congress - the healthcare reform is dead, after the constituent assembly brouhaha you'd surely expect the pension reform (and forgotten labour reform etc.) to be dead as well. Petro will use his aggressive, belligerent rhetoric to blame everyone else for these failures and to distract attention from the fact that his legislative accomplishments will be very meagre.

Here is my Substack post about the constituent assembly fracas: https://colombiapolelxn.substack.com/p/petros-constituent-assembly-a-divisive.

how thw 2026 race shaping up to be

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9 votes to 5, the seventh commission of the Senate has officially defeated and buried the healthcare reform.

As expected, nine senators voted in favour of a ponencia de archivo (proposal to kill a bill) which had been co-signed by eight senators some three weeks ago. Yesterday, using the opposition statute, they thwarted the government's attempts to delay the vote in commission and scheduled the vote for today. After several hours of debate and discussion, where the government's caucus delayed and delayed the final vote, the inevitable happened. Only the Pacto (and Comunes), along with Green senator Fabián Díaz, voted against the ponencia.



This is the biggest legislative defeat for Petro yet. I don't know if it was inevitable from the very beginning, but clearly the odds never favoured this reform, but the government refused to believe this and wasted a tremendous amount of time, energy and political capital on this one reform, which only delayed the quasi-inevitable by several months. And, as a knock-on effect, will likely kill the pension reform for lack of time.

While Clara Luz Roldán, the new co-president of the Partido de la U (and loyal surrogate of Dilian Francisca Toro), has said that the party has met with the interior and health ministers to discuss a new reform proposal, for now Petro, having failed to get the reform adopted by law, will try to ram as much of it as he can through decree and executive action. In the past 36-48 hours, the government has intervened (forcibly taken control) of the two largest EPS (health insurers/intermediaries, the main target of the reform).

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The Fiscalía has indicted Álvaro Uribe for witness tampering and he will stand trial.

The 'previous' Fiscalía under AG Francisco Barbosa (Duque's best friend) did everything to protect Uribe from a criminal accusation, with two prosecutors seeking to close the case. On three occasions, two judges and finally, last October, magistrates on Bogotá's superior tribunal, rejected the Fiscalía's requests to close the case, all finding that the prosecutors ignored or distorted evidence.

The prescriptive period (statute of limitations) is until August 2026, so the judiciary has until then to find him guilty or innocent. Barbosa ultimately failed to protect Uribe, but he did ensure that the clock started ticking in Uribe's favour.

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Small victory for the government in the Senate: by 49 votes to 33, the plenary voted to open debate on the government's version of the pension reform. Yesterday, before the quorum broke down, 28 of the reform's 94 articles had been approved. Unlike with the healthcare reform, the government make concessions on some points to the Liberals and La U, notably on reducing the income threshold for contributions to the public system (Colpensiones) and guarantees on the management of the fund that'll manage the public pension savings fund.

Still, the clock is ticking quickly: the reform must be approved in four debates (plus possible conciliation) by June 20 (plus extraordinary sessions), and it's still only in the second debate in the Senate. At the latest, the government would need to have the pension reform out of the Senate by the end of April.

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Today, Petro suddenly decreed that tomorrow, April 19 (and then the third Friday in April every year) will be a 'civic day of peace with nature'.

This is ostensibly to save water amidst water shortages (there is water rationing in Bogotá), but it also just so happens that April 19 is Petro's birthday and the mythical foundational day for the M-19 guerrilla (the date of the 'stolen' 1970 election).

It's not a public holiday but national government offices will be closed, but few territorial governments or private sector are following suit. There's a fair amount of chaotic confusion as people are not sure if their schools or workplaces are open or not tomorrow.

The sort of nonsense half-baked 'decisions' you expect from a class president.

Also feeds the memes/conspiracies about the large amount of times in a week that Petro is on a 'private agenda' (petrista version of executive time), which right-wingers insist means that he's getting drunk and high.

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Mass protests against the government today across Colombia, probably the biggest anti-Petro protests since he took office. There were about 200,000-250,000 nationally, and 80,000 people in Bogotá per local government sources. No way for petristas, who have loved to downplay past anti-Petro protests by getting into a silly game of headcounts, to spin this.



Unlike past protests this one didn't have an exclusively right-wing colour to them and attracted a much broader crowd, from the far-right to the 'lukewarm' centrists, along with different professional grounds with grievances against the government: healthcare professionals and long-haul freight transport drivers primarily. Politically, crowds ranged from the firebreathing far-right (with coupist dreams), the right-wing opposition including uribistas, to disgruntled centrists. Among the centrist leaders who participated publicly today: former education minister Alejandro Gaviria (one of the most vocal critics of the government after having been fired by Petro in February 2022), Sergio Fajardo (who will get a lot of well-deserved criticism for finally ceasing to be a wishy-washy lukewarm centrist dilettante for this protests, after being conspicuous by his absence in the 2019-2021 protests), Nuevo Liberalismo leader Juan Manuel Galán, Bogotá councillor Juan Daniel Oviedo, Catherine Juvinao (Green representative who voted Petro in 2022), former minister Rudolf Hommes (the minister of the neoliberal 'apertura económica' in the early 1990s who voted Petro in 2022), centrist rep. Daniel Carvalho (ally of senator Humberto de la Calle) and former Medellín Green councillor Daniel Duque.

There's no way to deny that this was a massive popular mobilization in opposition to the government, from a broad array of society and political opinion, without being intellectually dishonest. The narrative is that the government must listen to the streets. Laura Sarabia, Petro's right-hand woman and one of the few persons he listens to, tweeted that they must recognize that many people mobilized and that the govt. must face it in reflection and self-criticism.

Petro's reaction has been this long rant-tweet which of course has no reflection or self-criticism but lots of whinging about how they hate him and want to overthrow him mixed in with cheap class warfare, and delusions about 'the popular forces must respond on May 1' (Petro has said he'd march with the unions).

https://twitter.com/petrogustavo/status/1782163476388925868