Gustavo Petro, during the investiture ceremony as president of Colombia, this Sunday. JUAN BARRETO (AFP)
but more than a quarter) which is really nothing more than a sign of polarization: after years of management, his staunchest supporters remain with the outgoing president, and he has lost the rest.
External factors, favorable or unfavorable, are not in the hands of the government.
But how do you deal with them?
And Petro's inaugural speech was his first act in that sense.
As such, it constitutes the first clue as to where the mandate that has generated the most expectations and vertigo in Colombia in recent decades is most likely to end.
Both the expectations and the vertigo are due in no small measure to a presidential campaign in which Petro and his acolytes have promised everything, and already.
It is not a way of speaking: "total peace" and "living tasty" are all-encompassing slogans in which there is room for a transformative change that would touch all aspects of Colombian daily life.
In his speech he repeated them again, indicating that in the two central dilemmas that any president faces, Petro is located in maximalist positions.
He aspires to rule for everyone, not just his own.
And he also aspires not to leave any challenge, any problem of great magnitude, aside.
But of course, governing for all implies maintaining coalitions of heterogeneous interests, both within his cabinet (which already today shows this ideological diversity and disposition) as well as in Congress and in the streets.
That makes each subsequent action more complicated by the number of people to keep in the same boat.
At the same time, not prioritizing problems, or doing so only timidly, implies an investment of human, economic and enormous political capital.
When the two maxima are combined, the task appears impossible: to get many to agree on almost everything.
This bet that Petro drew in his inauguration, consistent with what has been his long career until the House of Nariño, can place him both at the highest end of approval at the end of his term and at the lowest.
It is risky because it is ambitious, which makes it likely that it will be forced to correct course at some point in the coming months, forced by external challenges (it will not be lacking: inflation, poverty, changing internal and external security context) as well as by the impossibility to execute your overall plan.
Faced with this eventuality, every president is tempted to entrench himself in his own, to point to that intermediate approval based on his staunch support at the end of his mandate.
To give up maximum inclusion, but not the maximum number of problems to be addressed.
But, difficult as it is for a totalizing politician (and movement) to take on, Petro would do well to at least consider the other renunciation: that of choosing certain issues, a few specific challenges, on which to bet everything.
Because perhaps it is better to solve one or two problems well for a lot of people than to half solve a lot of problems for a handful of people who were still going to stay on your side between now and 2026.
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