The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

ANALYSIS | How could Petro be the president who unites all Colombians? These are your main challenges

2022-06-22T00:29:53.219Z


Petro has a series of challenges to unite Colombia: and having won with only 50.4% of the vote and not having majorities in Congress poses significant challenges in a polarized environment.


Petro proposes a change in Colombia: what challenges does it face?

2:39

(CNN Spanish) --

Gustavo Petro was elected to be the next president of Colombia with an ambitious agenda that ranges from implementing social justice, ending economic inequalities, guaranteeing basic rights such as free and universal education and health, to putting Colombia as a leader in environmental issues in the world.

Although his agenda was the winner in the presidential elections of June 19, 2022, the president-elect has a series of challenges to unite Colombians, since the fact that he won with 50.4% of the votes and not counting with majorities in Congress does not guarantee that the country he will govern fully supports him and therein lies the challenge: to lead for an entire country that remains highly polarized.

As of August 7, 2022, Petro will have to join forces with allies and opponents so that the country can emerge from the social and economic crisis after four years of Iván Duque's government.

"There are very high expectations that people have for this government. The question is whether he is going to meet expectations," Michael Shifter, a senior fellow and former president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank that studies, told CNN. international relations in the western hemisphere.

Shifter's is just a starting point where the Petro presidency will begin.

The president-elect arrived after widespread social discontent in the last two years in particular, with an increase in poverty deepened by the pandemic, and a generational weariness of unfulfilled promises by a political class that governed the country for years without fulfilling them. to the Colombians.

"The

 status quo

 is no longer good enough, people reject that and want change," Shifter said.

"Now whether he's going to be able to pull it off, or implement it, that's another matter."

  • ANALYSIS |

    Gustavo Petro, the new president of Colombia, aims to relaunch relations with the US.

Will the left in Colombia follow in the footsteps of Venezuela?

1:41

governance

It is perhaps one of the most important topics on which the conversation has turned: Petro's ability to govern.

Although these presidential elections represented for analysts a referendum for the traditional parties, these are still present in Congress and it is with them that Petro must maneuver to implement its government plan, in which many Colombians have high expectations.

advertising

"Gustavo Petro has to transform coalitions," Paola Montilla, director of the School of Government and Public Policy at the Externado de Colombia University, told CNN.

"Although Petro in the Senate has 17% thanks to the large number of seats won by the Historical Pact, we have a presence from the Democratic Center, the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and the other forces of the traditional parties," added Montilla.

On July 20, when the new Congress of Colombia —which was elected on March 13— is installed, due to the status of the opposition, the parties must publicly say whether they are from the Government, opposition or independent.

It is then that Petro will know with whom he will govern and where he should put his energies to negotiate.

"Petro showed during his candidacy that he was willing to approach the more traditional political class to get those deals," Santiago Silva, a political science professor at EAFIT University in Medellin, told CNN.

"There are some traditional politicians who have been accompanying his campaign for several months now who are probably going to do a job to build that bridge," says Silva, noting that in the coming weeks these traditional political forces will rearrange themselves to try to form some kind of coalition in Petro's government.

"It's going to require a lot of negotiation," Silva said.

  • What could happen to the dollar and the Colombian peso after the triumph of Gustavo Petro?

Meet Gustavo Petro, Colombia's first leftist president 3:41

The challenges for the economy of Gustavo Petro

Petro's economic program has been criticized from various quarters.

The president of the National Association of Colombian Entrepreneurs (ANDI), Bruce Mac Master, said that Petro's fiscal proposal "is not feasible" and that the proposed reform of the energy matrix would imply a burden for Colombia in "exchange rate , exchange balance, inflation, poverty, employment".

Likewise, it has received criticism from the National Federation of Coal Producers and the Colombian Association of Petroleum Engineers.

One of the fears of Petro's opponents during his campaign (2018 and 2022) is that, being leftist, Petro would lead Colombia down the same path as Venezuela.

But during his victory speech, the president-elect said that under his government the economy would be capitalist.

Since losing the 2018 election, Petro has constantly tried to downplay fears that his economic plan, which also calls for halting fossil fuel exploration and renegotiating international trade deals, is "too radical" for Colombia.

Since then, he has surrounded himself with more traditional politicians who could build bridges with the establishment.

Now, he is presenting himself as a new kind of progressive.

"We are going to develop capitalism in Colombia," Petro said on June 19, perhaps before the astonished gaze of many who believed what Petro said were "lies and unfounded fears" by the opposition, that under his government he would expropriate the assets of Colombians, to destroy private property, something that the current president-elect rejected during the campaign.

Dismantling that narrative will be another challenge, as well as assuring investors that under his government they can have confidence.

"You have to give a quick and trustworthy signal and reassure both foreign investors and Colombian businessmen so that they don't take their capital out of the country and there can be continuity in the economic recovery," Daniel Mejía, an analyst at the Universidad de los Andes, on the economic future of the country.

While Colombia has seen impressive economic growth in recent years, inequality rates remain among the highest in the world, with nearly half of Colombians saying the economy is headed in the wrong direction, according to a recent Gallup poll. .

Petro will receive a country with a rising inflation level (for May 2022 it was at 9.08% compared to 2021) which is not a phenomenon only in Colombia, but in several countries, including the US, which has received this tail of the Russian war in Ukraine and the post-covid era;

and also a high level of unemployment that during the government of Iván Duque went from 9.7% in 2018 to 13.7% in 2021. In April 2022, the unemployment rate was 11.2%.

"We are talking about two phenomena: inflation and unemployment," Germán Darío Valencia, an economist and doctor in Political Science from the Institute of Political Studies of the University of Antioquia, told CNN.

"To this we must add two other phenomena: the increase in poverty, the result of those neoliberal economic reforms that have taken place over time, and that have increased the situation of poverty, and two inequality," added the expert .

With this scenario, which Petro has promised to address, expectations are also very high, because with the specter of the economic crisis in neighboring Venezuela, Petro is also risking the support of an impoverished country that has placed its hopes in the left-wing leader. .

"He has to try to unite the country and try to show that he is going to be able to fulfill those promises he made in the campaign and that in some way generated fear within the population, such as the possibility of attacking private property, an economic model, attacking democracy, perpetuating himself in power. These issues will have to demonstrate in his government that they were speculations and that he will respect the rule of law," Ricardo Ferro, representative to the Chamber of the Democratic Center, told CNN.

Claudia López, mayor of Bogotá, told CNN that a Petro government could not lead Colombia down a path like that of Venezuela (understood as the concentration of power in the figure of the president, dependence on oil and the conditions of corruption of that country) due, according to her, to the non-rentist economic structure of Colombia;

the decentralization of power, the economy and institutions;

the lack of parliamentary majorities of the elected president and the notorious counterweights of the high courts.

López is not part of Petro's political group and during his mayoralty he has had clashes with the senator.

But, although she, because she was acting mayor, could not speak out in the presidential campaign, this Monday after the election she told CNN that she was happy with Petro's victory.

In addition, her wife, Congresswoman Angélica Lozano, did announce her support in the second round for the candidate.

The mayor described Petro as "the great 

alter ego

" of Álvaro Uribe and that therefore he would not do what the former president did: modify the Constitution in 2004 to re-elect himself and try to get a second re-election, something that the Supreme Court prevented in 2010.

Will the left in Colombia follow in the footsteps of Venezuela?

1:41

international relations

A final point that is also critical is Petro's commitment to dealing with foreign relations during his government.

In the campaign, he advocated the reestablishment of relations with the Government of Venezuela, something that has been criticized by the Colombian right, which has bet on the rupture of relations between Bogotá and Caracas during the government of Iván Duque, in neighboring countries that have a high migratory flow and many common themes.

"I want to think that at this moment, both the president-elect and those who accompany him imagine themselves much closer to what is happening in Chile than what has happened in Venezuela," said Silva, the professor of International Relations at EAFIT.

"Probably what we're going to see in the next few weeks, in the next few months, is going to be his attempt to get much closer to that conversation," Silva added.

"In particular because of something that is quite evident in the Colombian case and that is the systematic fear and the way in which the narrative around the case of Nicolás Maduro has been connected, even with Gustavo Petro."

Petro has sought to establish international ties with new progressives, such as the Progressive legislative group in the United States Congress, President Gabriel Boric of Chile, and has strongly distanced himself from the questioned president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.

In an interview with CNN last week, Petro said he intends to renegotiate Colombia's trade deals with the US.

It also plans to open a dialogue around three main themes: protection of the Amazon rainforest;

end the war on drugs;

and move the Colombian economy away from extractive projects such as fossil fuels.

As CNN's Stefano Pozzebón wrote, approaches and conversations with the government of US President Joe Biden may be difficult, since both have opposing positions on issues such as relations with Venezuela.

But the two presidents could still find common ground in areas such as environmental protection and the energy transition.

With Petro in power, how will his relationship with the US be?

1:25

Academic Carlos Díaz-Rosillo, former Assistant Deputy Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs, explained in an interview with CNN that diplomatic relations between Colombia and the United States are extremely important for both countries, so that while Gustavo Petro represents a radical change "Of what the presidents of Colombia have been", Colombia is a country "with very strong institutions" and the elected president does not have a majority in Congress either, so there would be continuity in the relations between both countries.

Petro, finally, has also spoken of the desire to create a new progressive alliance in South America.

This would likely involve the president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, and the president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, rather than the three authoritarian countries of the broader Latin American region, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

-- With information from Ilse Borrero, Sebastián Jiménez and Stefano Pozzebón from CNN in Bogotá.

Elections ColombiaGustavo Petro

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2022-06-22

You may like

News/Politics 2024-02-29T04:55:08.623Z
News/Politics 2024-03-07T05:06:42.613Z
News/Politics 2024-02-12T05:14:20.316Z

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.