The reappearance of Alvaro Leyva in Miraflores highlights the dilemma of the Petro Government in the face of the Venezuelan crisis

Álvaro Leyva never stays still, and that is acknowledged by both his own and outsiders. The first foreign minister of Gustavo Petro’s government, who fell into disgrace due to the failed tender to produce Colombian passports and no longer holds any official position, made a surprise reappearance on Wednesday alongside Nicolás Maduro at the Miraflores palace in Caracas, just the same week that Colombia debated at the highest level possible solutions to the post-electoral crisis in neighbouring Venezuela. “We analysed world geopolitics and the great challenges of our region,” wrote Maduro on his social networks, entrenched in proclaiming himself the winner of the presidential elections on 28 July without showing any evidence to support this result, which is not recognised by the bulk of the international community. He accompanied his message with four photos, in two of which they were also accompanied by the foreign minister of the Bolivarian Republic, Yvan Gil.

Leyva’s visit was “in a personal capacity,” clarified the current head of Colombian diplomacy, Luis Gilberto Murillo, although he noted that the government looks favorably on the two-hour meeting he held with Maduro. “I think that everyone who can contribute – and especially him – to the fundamental solution to the political peace challenges that Venezuela has, should do so,” declared Murillo on Thursday, who has made insistent calls for prudence and discretion in the midst of his intense diplomatic efforts. The current foreign minister replaced Leyva after the Attorney General’s Office suspended him for the convoluted tendering of passports, a controversy that ended up costing him his dismissal. Colombia has so far avoided recognizing any winner in the Venezuelan elections without burning bridges with Chavismo, while trying to mediate together with Brazil in search of a negotiated solution.

Leyva, an octogenarian politician of conservative origin, has been a sort of shadow peace commissioner at various times during the Petro government, which is now two years old. The first leftist president of contemporary Colombia has put diplomacy at the service of his project of total peace, with which he proposes to dialogue simultaneously with multiple armed groups. Leyva even used to present himself as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Peace, an unofficial title, to make this emphasis evident. In the past he had already mediated between various governments and different groups, sometimes as a sort of free agent who has created alternative channels of communication, parallel to the official ones.

Under Leyva, Colombia quickly reestablished its always difficult relations with Chavista Venezuela, which became one of the guarantors of peace negotiations with the ELN, the last armed guerrilla group, and the dissidents of the extinct FARC. These groups not only operate on the other side of the border that unites the two countries, they also find refuge in Venezuela, as many investigations have documented. The constructive role of Caracas in the negotiations for total peace is key. Leyva’s management in the Foreign Ministry was criticized, among many other reasons, for privileging this agenda of negotiations over Colombia’s other diplomatic interests.

On the eve of appearing alongside Maduro, Leyva had posted on his social networks – after a month of inactivity – another photo with former president Álvaro Uribe, whom he described as a “significant figure in the history of Colombia,” and also a diatribe against Petro’s new Minister of the Interior, Juan Fernando Cristo. In that message he insists on his theory that the peace agreement with the extinct FARC guerrilla group opens the doors to a Constituent Assembly – although on this occasion he avoids using that word – widely considered nonsense. The scope of his actions “on a personal basis” is at least uncertain, but they occur simultaneously with the intense debate unleashed in Colombia around the position that the country should have regarding Venezuela.

Petro summons former presidents, but Venezuela divides opinions

One month after the Venezuelan elections, the mediation attempt by Colombia and Brazil has worn thin without any tangible results. The opposition defends the resounding victory of Edmundo González, supported by almost all of the electoral records it collected, but Maduro turns a deaf ear to international pressure. Maduro himself has acknowledged that he has a pending call with Petro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who insisted over the weekend in a joint declaration that the credibility of the electoral process “can only be restored through the transparent publication of disaggregated and verifiable data.” The text reiterates that they are still waiting for “the dissemination, by the National Electoral Council, of the records broken down by voting table,” calls for avoiding repression and, in a nod to Chavismo, criticizes the unilateral sanctions against Venezuela.

Previously, Petro and Lula had already publicly suggested to Maduro, separately, the possibility of a transitional coalition government and new elections with guarantees as a way out of the crisis. Petro even listed a series of steps that included the lifting of sanctions, a general national and international amnesty, total guarantees for political action, a transitional cohabitation government and “new free elections,” an idea criticized from different sides. For Colombia, it is vital that the crisis be resolved peacefully, since in addition to the extensive border it shares with Venezuela and the negotiations for total peace, it is by far the main host country for the Venezuelan diaspora.

Amid internal criticism for not strongly condemning Maduro – as Chilean Gabriel Boric, another leftist president, has done – Petro headed the Foreign Policy Advisory Council this week, a high-level body to which the six living former presidents belong, as well as some diplomats and congressmen. The only former president who attended was the liberal Ernesto Samper (1994-1998), while the conservatives Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002) and Iván Duque (2018-2022) have taken advantage of the meeting to accuse Petro of being an accomplice of Maduro, a figure widely repudiated in Colombian public opinion. Neither Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) nor César Gaviria (1990-1994) have publicly expressed their positions.

“The most important thing about the Advisory Commission was that there was an opportunity to discuss, regretting the absence of former presidents,” he said. Samper in conversation with Morning Express. “The first conclusion on which we agreed is that we must insist that the minutes be shown; there is a consensus in supporting the request made by Mexico, Colombia and Brazil,” he says, without going into the most confidential details. There was also important agreement in asking for guarantees for the opposition, he points out. “My position is that we must seek a peaceful, democratic and institutional solution. And that solution has to come from the Venezuelans, and not imposed from outside,” says the former Secretary General of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR).

Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018), who had attended a previous session but did not attend this week’s, stated his position on Venezuela in a message addressed to Petro in which he stated that “the Venezuelan regime has lost all legitimacy and Maduro must leave” power. “This is what is best for the region and particularly for Colombia. We do not want another Nicaragua entrenched in a country of the importance of Venezuela, with which we have 2,200 kilometers of border and a lot of interdependence,” said the Nobel Peace Prize winner in the memo he made public. “Colombia’s caution in remaining a possible mediator and maintaining channels of communication is understandable, but that window is closing, which turns caution into weakness or even complicity,” he said. Colombian diplomacy has come up against a labyrinth.

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