With the resignation of the Minister of Defense on Tuesday, four of the most delicate issues for Gustavo Petro’s government are in the hands of ministers with little experience, or in the interinity of who has already announced his departure. The outgoing Iván Velásquez leaves after the government declared the state of internal shock in the Catatumbo region and when the country faces the most serious security crises of the last governments. Velásquez, who came to office from the beginning of the mandate with great prestige, national and international, as a leader against corruption, is only the most recent of the heavyweights of the cabinet that will leave their position. In the world of diplomacy, Luis Gilberto Murillo came out. In the management of the Legislative, Juan Fernando Cristo. In Finance, Ricardo Bonilla. Ministers who had delicate issues for Petro such as peace, diplomacy with Maduro and Trump, the fiscal sustainability of their social reforms, and the possibility of approved in the legislative.
The first to leave the cabinet was Ricardo Bonilla, in December last year. Although he had been very close to the president, since he was appointed in April 2023, he was also recognized as a serious economist, even by experts from other political shores. He arrived with the experience of having been secretary of the Treasury of the capital in the Mayor’s Office of Petro, and the promise of financing the proposals of the change in a responsible manner. But he left the government to defend himself before justice for having allegedly a key actor in a network of corruption with the money of the National Risk Management Unit. It was replaced by his vice minister, Diego Guevara, an academic respected but with much less experience in the public sector, and who now must face great financial burgles of the government, as a fiscal deficit of 6.1% and approve an announced tax reform when the majorities In the legislative they are not guaranteed.
On the subject of Congress, to approve this and other social reforms, the Ministry of Interior other heavyweight, Juan Fernando Cristo. Senator from 1998 to 2014, and Minister of the Interior during the government of Juan Manuel Santos, Christ arrived at Petro’s cabinet last year with the hope of finding new political agreements between different parties to approve the social reforms of the Government, such as labor and labor and Health. His great victory was to achieve the approval of the General System of Participations, and that the reforms to health, labor and the law of agricultural jurisdiction would not sink. His defeats, which the political reform and the Financing Law, which left a 12 billion pesos hole in the national budget fall.
Before Christ, there were other experienced former senators, such as Alfonso Prada and Luis Fernando Velasco. Christ replaces, temporarily, Gustavo García Figueroa, his vice minister and son of former liberal senator Gustavo García Realpe, who supported Petro in the presidential campaign of 2022. While Guevara worked in the ministry also during the Santos Government, he does not have a Experience as long in the legislative as the other three former congresses, and it does have in your hands to give a future to the government’s social reforms.
At the same time, Petro is in the process of redefining Colombia’s diplomatic relations with his neighbor, Venezuela, and his most important commercial ally in the continent, United States. Both relations with Nicolás Maduro were in fragile field after presidential possession in Caracas, which Petro did not attend, as with Donald Trump, after Petro protest because the migrant Colombians were being deported in chains. To face tensions there is no longer one of the most experienced diplomats, Luis Gilberto Murillo, who was ambassador to the United States at the beginning of the government and had already managed to establish good relations with African -American congressmen. It is replaced by Laura Sarabia, 30, the youngest chancellor in the history of Colombia, and who has not yet had a position in the foreign service. His inexperience, however, compensates with an advantage, its proximity to Petro, who at the end of the day can define diplomatic relations with Maduro or Trump with a trill.
“I am not ashamed or frightened by my youth,” Sarabia said in an interview with the magazine Change. “I like to think that, despite the positions I have occupied in recent years, I have much more future than past. I admit that I do not know them, with that I have no problem, and that allows me to listen and advise me with people who help me to be what you mention: efficient, operational, and with the ability to manage. ” Daniel Ávila, a career diplomat since 1996, and who already has experience in the United States, will be his Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, who could cover that inexperience of the new chancellor.
The exits of Velásquez, Murillo, Cristo and Bonilla, who had hot popes in their agendas, add to that of Susana Muhamad, Minister of Environment, with a long career on the green agenda since he worked with Petro in the Mayor’s Office of Bogotá as Secretary of Environment. Muhamad resigned, but asked Petro to stay in office until March 3 and thus finish resolving his biggest challenge in the portfolio: the negotiations in the COP-16, which started in Cali, but will finish resolving in Rome to Rome to end of this month.
“It is important because we have a filigree negotiation since November, and that generates confidence among the ministers [de Ambiente de distintos países]”He said in an interview with El País. “It is a very delicate negotiation, it is difficult to transfer that to another person in such a short time. We are facing an immediacy, which needs an answer. The important thing is that Colombia as a country can move forward with that negotiation, ”he added. The Government has not yet announced whether it will replace it with a Vice Ministry, or someone with an experience equivalent to that of the minister.
