There are 90% of Colombians who do not look at X - formerly Twitter - and it is possible that at this point they still do not know that Colombia is going through a serious political storm.
On the social network, in recent days, there has been a dialectical battle that even calls into question the constitutional order of the country.
President Gustavo Petro has used his preferred communication channel to alert the world, in a message published in several languages - Arabic included - of an alleged plan organized by the Prosecutor's Office to remove him from power.
It is not the first time that the president speaks of a coup against him, but in this second chapter the rupture between the executive and judicial branches has escalated one step further.
The voices calling for reducing the tension have multiplied in the last few hours, but the coming days will show whether the tension continues to increase or the tense calm that has been experienced since the first left-wing government came to power a year and a half ago is recovered. of the modern history of the country.
On Thursday there are two appointments that will mark the week.
On the one hand, the Supreme Court of Justice will meet to elect the successor of the current attorney general, Francisco Barbosa, whose term ends next Monday.
On the other hand, the education union has called a march, with the support of Petro, in front of the Court headquarters in Bogotá as a form of pressure.
I ask all human rights organizations, progressive parties and workers' organizations in Colombia and the world to pay attention to this complaint:
I have heard prominent jurists talking about institutional rupture in the case of the chancellor of the...
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) February 2, 2024
On January 25, the 23 judges that make up the judicial body already tried to elect a new prosecutor from the shortlist sent by the president.
None of the three proposed women obtained a sufficient vote because 13 magistrates voted blank, which generated a new disagreement between Petro and the entity.
The manifest enmity between the president and Barbosa, appointed by former president Iván Duque, dates back to the times of the last electoral campaign and has not stopped escalating.
Located in two opposing ideological biases, the prosecutor has attacked the Government on several occasions in a form of opposition that has contributed to blurring the line of the separation of powers.
Petro, for his part, has always responded by fighting against what he considers a Prosecutor's Office that acts outside the law.
Both he and Barbosa have tried in recent months to redirect the situation on several occasions, but the animosity between them is greater than their desire to show institutional balance.
The clash got out of control in recent days, when Barbosa was already heading towards the exit door.
Petro considers that behind the decision of the Attorney General's Office to suspend Chancellor Álvaro Leyva for three months - for declaring the passport tender void - and of the Prosecutor's Office to investigate a contribution of 500 million pesos from the teachers' union to the Pact campaign Historically, in 2022, the intention to seize power is hidden.
A plan orchestrated by the Prosecutor's Office, with the assistance of a Prosecutor's Office headed by a former Duque minister, to erase it from the map.
The idea that the conservative elites that have always held power in Colombia want to put an end to it has been a constant complaint by the president.
For many analysts, this is a strategy to present himself as a victim in the face of the few political advances of the so-called Government of change, but in any case, the president is not lacking in precedent.
In 2013, when he was mayor of Bogotá, Petro was dismissed by a judicial decision and regained his position thanks to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which agreed with him.
Years later, the Inter-American Court condemned the Colombian State for violating his political rights.
That fact, which contributed to consolidating his image as a leader of the left, remained etched in his memory.
His guerrilla past and his years in hiding and prison earned him the repudiation of the ruling class for decades, which never took his presidential aspirations seriously.
His victory in 2022, however, ended that resistance in one fell swoop.
Petro came to the Presidency accompanied by an enormous wave of hope in much of the country that led him to add moderate sectors and sectors of liberal and social democratic descent to his cabinet.
An unexpected political capital that, however, vanished in a few months.
For some, due to the president's small waist due to the diversity of opinions in his government;
for others, due to the few political results of his mandate;
for Petro, due to the enormous resistance that change generates in certain sectors of power.
Whether for some reasons, others or all at once, the president sees the shadow of a coup d'état very close.
Petro has given his full support to Leyva in the face of his temporary suspension.
The chancellor said this Monday that he will abide by the decision of the Attorney General's Office when the president names his successor, which for now has not happened.
The Attorney General's Office already speaks of "open contempt" on the part of both that "attacks the rule of law, the Constitution and the law."
The case of the investigation into the campaign contributions of the teachers' union, in which Petro sees a black hand behind it, is not new.
The campaigns of his two predecessors -Duque and Juan Manuel Santos- were also the subject of investigations that ultimately did not prosper.
So far, the voices that have been raised to respond to the international alert launched by the president are still few.
The same Government issued a statement this Monday containing the support of the European Left Party, which brings together more than forty national left-wing parties of different tendencies in Europe and whose headquarters are in Brussels, explains the note, in which they have shown “its deepest concern for the actions of the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General and the Attorney General of Colombia, who manifest an evident laxity with organized crime, and instead put constant obstacles in the actions of the democratically elected government of Colombia.”
The Puebla Group, which brings together progressive Ibero-American leaders, also gave its support to the Colombian president.
As analyst Yolanda Ruiz explains, having the Court appoint a new prosecutor this Thursday would help normalize the situation.
Failure to do so would place Deputy Prosecutor Martha Mancera, from Barbosa's wing, in charge of the Prosecutor's Office on an interim basis.
The outgoing prosecutor himself hinted at his letters in recent statements.
“There is total support from the United States and the Department of Justice for the Deputy Attorney General of the Nation.
Precisely, within the conversation we had, they are very calm.
She is in very good hands in case the Supreme Court takes additional time,” she said of choosing her successor.
The next chapters of this battle can be followed by the president's X account, 10% of Colombians who use the social network.
So far Barbosa does not have a profile there, although Petro thought he found him this past weekend.
The president entered into an argument with a false account in the name of the prosecutor which, amid the seriousness of the mutual accusations, turned Colombia's latest political fire into a viral success.
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