Gustavo Petro reinforces his Government with liberals and former comrades-in-arms

The National Progressive Liberal Congress, in support of the candidacy of Gustavo Petro, in Bogotá, on May 17, 2022. Courtesy

The trickle of appointments from the nascent Government of Gustavo Petro, which has not even defined who will head the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications (ICT), is gradually revealing who will rule.

The appointments of this Thursday and Friday show that two quarries are gaining relevance: that of his former colleagues in the extinct M-19 guerrilla and that of politicians from the more left-wing, or social democratic, sector of the traditional Liberal Party.

From the M-19 comes Alberto Casanova, the new head of the National Intelligence Directorate (DNI).

Without experience in Intelligence, he will now head the entity in charge of the issue and which inherited part of the functions and officials of the former Administrative Department of Security (DAS), which President Juan Manuel Santos dismantled in 2011 after it was found that it had been used to carry out illegal operations against the opposition to the Government of Álvaro Uribe, including Petro.

Casanova replaces a retired admiral, Rodolfo Amaya, and will be the first director of the DNI who does not come from the Armed Forces.

He joins Augusto Rodríguez, the new director of the National Protection Unit and also demobilized from the M-19, key positions for the security and protection of Petro and his government.

The other two appointments reiterate the trust that Petro has placed in career politicians, such as his Secretary General of the Presidency, Mauricio Lizcano, or his Minister of the Interior, Alfonso Prada, but also his harmony with the more left wing of liberalism, of the that their Ministers of Finance, José Antonio Ocampo, or of Agriculture, Cecilia López, are coming.

The first is that of Gustavo García Figueroa as Vice Minister of the Interior, in charge of political relations (with the Legislature, but also with local authorities) and citizen security matters.

García Figueroa is the son of Guillermo García Realpe, until June a senator of the Liberal Party and who supported Petro's candidacy since 2021, since he has always declared himself a social democrat.

The new deputy minister has maintained that political vision: in February, when he was a candidate for the Senate for the Centro Esperanza Coalition, from the center, he explained in an interview with Let's Talk about Politics that "we keep the liberal principles in our hearts, in our minds and in our Act" .

García worked in the Santos Government delegation that negotiated the peace agreement with the FARC, which is now more than five years old.

The second, and more notorious, is that of former liberal senator Luis Fernando Velasco as high presidential adviser for the regions.

With the announced reform of the Presidency there will be fewer councillors, so those who remain will have more visibility and power, and in particular the council of the regions, in a government that has among its key strategies the so-called regional dialogues, spaces for conversation in the territories to build other policies, especially that of peace.

Subscribe here