Colombian Politics and Elections

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Finally, elections being over, here's a general Colombian politics and elections discussion/personal monologues-effortposts thread. The next elections will be next fall's local and regional elections.

Gustavo Petro has been in office for a bit over a month now. He's still on an honeymoon with the public, with 59% approval in the regular Invamer-Gallup poll in late August and 69% favourability in a CNC poll for Semana around the same time, in both cases with just 20% disapproving - these are the highest approval ratings for a president in a decade. This is much to the media elite and opposition's chagrin, as they've been trying hard to spin relatively minor things out of proportion.

You can read my lengthy summary of what has happened since mid-August here: https://medium.com/colombian-politics-and-elections/colombian-politics-digest-iii-the-realities-of-power-be276a895a89
And you can read my analysis of the tax reform here: https://medium.com/colombian-politics-and-elections/petros-2022-tax-reform-c4b3a6011791

In political terms, Petro has put together a supermajority coalition in Congress with the left, the Greens, the Liberals, the Conservatives and La U, which combine to over two-thirds of the seats in both houses. The first tests of just how reliable this coalition is will be coming up in the coming weeks and months with the tax reform and other legislative priorities including a public order/security bill and a political-electoral reform. Much like Santos' Unidad Nacional coalition, Petro's coalition is built on traditional exchange of favours and bureaucratic transactions rather than ideological coherence - he conceded 'political representation' to the Liberals, La U and the Conservatives in his cabinet (the latter appearing to be the most pampered). The Liberals and the U already tried their hand at blackmailing him and threatening not to declare themselves as pro-government, which is probably a sign of what's to come in Years 2-3-4.

Overall Petro has been doing an OK job so far - some good decisions, some controversial ones and some problematic things.

'Total peace' - essentially peace with all remaining armed groups - is receiving a lot of attention from the government, but seems to be managed in a haphazard way and is off to a rocky start on the ground (violence is continuing at high levels), and there are lots of valid criticisms to be made of what the government is doing.

The tax reform is mostly good, with some rooms for improvement and some areas where the government should send clearer signals. It is telling that the right-wing opposition's main attack against the tax reform is a bunch of dumb memes about "our beloved junk food and sugary drinks are going to be more expensive!". In a sign that he's not an irresponsible populist, unlike some Latin American leftists, Petro has taken the quite unpopular but very much necessary and responsible decision to gradually raise fuel prices and basically reduce the fuel subsidies that are a huge burden on public finances (Colombia has some of the lowest gas prices in Latin America, besides Venezuela and Bolivia).

In foreign policy there's been some pretty unfortunate and problematic steps, which is disappointing given that a lot of people had high hopes for Petro here. The improvement of relations with Venezuela and the gradual reopening of the border are good news, and Maduro's willingness to get involved in the peace talks with the ELN is good and necessary, but Petro needs to be very careful to avoid the perception that he is shoring up or legitimizing Maduro's regime (which is what Maduro is looking for in this). He's been able to avoid this so far, and had a good and quick reaction when Diosdado Cabello said that Colombia should extradite Venezuelan dissidents, but it will get tougher and tougher in coming weeks and months. On Nicaragua, Colombia deliberately skipped a OAS vote condemning Ortega's dictatorship, in a very dumb and naive attempt to get a bilateral negotiation with Ortega over the maritime border dispute (where the ICJ has ruled in Nicaragua's favour). Hopefully they've learned their lesson. Petro's reactions to Cristina Kirchner's judicial problems (signing a letter of support for her with Alberto Fernández, AMLO and Arce) and the Chilean constitutional plebiscite (tweeting 'Pinochet revived' like some annoying Twitter leftist) were really not great and Petro really needs to avoid falling into the trap of ideological foreign policy/diplomacy like Duque did (which is the reason why Duque's foreign policy was catastrophic).

There's been several controversies, mini-scandals, gaffes and blunders by the government and the ruling coalition. Some are dumb -- the uncomfortably misogynistic undertones of most of the attacks on Pacto rep. Susana Boreal. Others are more serious and reminders of some of the nasty people in the Pacto -- senator Alex Flórez's drunken outburst at the cops while with an escort girl in Cartagena (even if he admitted to his alcoholism, it just adds to the long list of reasons why this misogynistic and narcissistic asshole is a terrible person). Mines and energy minister Irene Vélez has become the target of a lot of media and opposition criticism for a number of gaffes/blunders and controversies (see my Medium post) and while some of it is valid -- she lacks the experience and expert knowledge for the portfolio and needs to learn on the job, but is still a smart woman who has potential to be a decent minister -- a lot of it is increasingly coming off as bullying and  a media circus, again with an uncomfortable sexist undertone.

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No surprise, but Petro clearly laid out a big change in Colombian foreign policy (traditionally in lock step with the US) in his speech to the UN, calling for an end to the “War on Drugs”, and pointing out that responsibility for the failures, and for climate change, lies with the global north.

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No surprise, but Petro clearly laid out a big change in Colombian foreign policy (traditionally in lock step with the US) in his speech to the UN, calling for an end to the “War on Drugs”, and pointing out that responsibility for the failures, and for climate change, lies with the global north.

Yeah, it was an extremely blunt speech - pretty savage attack on 'the Global North' and modern capitalism (very thinly veiled and sometimes quasi-explicit digs at the US on stuff like African-American incarceration rates, private prisons and drug consumption). I think it was a quite powerful speech and reiterates that he wants climate change (with a special focus on Amazon rainforest conservation) and drug policy to be the core focus of his foreign policy agenda, and he was very good at telling the hard truths that the war on drugs has failed, that the fight against climate change is not doing well and in emphasizing the hypocrisy of 'the Global North' on those issues.

I do think it was a bit of an activist speech and perhaps a bit too much of a black and white 'Global North = victimizers / Global South = victims' angle. There's also some ideological leftist notes which aren't really my thing, and again, Petro would do well to avoid that kind of stuff in diplomacy. Also not a fan of the ambiguity on the invasion of Ukraine, but that's rather minor in this case.

Reactions seem to cut along the lines you'd expect. The right/uribismo thinks it was the worst thing ever, a lot of them criticizing what they see as apologism for coca/cocaine/drugs; the petristas think it was the greatest thing they ever heard. Petro is clearly good at giving some very strong speeches, but, again, we need to wait and see how this translates into concrete actions.

I recommend reading his speech in full as it's quite something: https://petro.presidencia.gov.co/prensa/Paginas/Discurso-del-Presidente-Gustavo-Petro-ante-la-77-Asamblea-General-de-la-Org-220920.aspx

In domestic political news, Rodolfo Hernández's brief stint in the Senate is coming to an end already. He's confirmed that he will resign his seat soon, most likely in anticipation of a run for governor of Santander next fall (current officeholders who want to run locally next year must resign from office a year before the elections, so late October at the latest). As I've said many times Rodolfo is really out of place in Congress and he has repeatedly made clear that he doesn't care for legislatures or the job of a legislator, and has said his presence in the Senate is like having "Messi as a goalkeeper". Rodolfo has gotten official legal recognition for his party, the Liga, and has promptly turned into a personal dictatorship-family business, with the statutes declaring him 'president-founder for life' with final word on everything and with the party leadership made up of his immediate family and two of his employees. He's distanced himself from his running mate, Marelen Castillo, and is apparently hounding her to repay the 'f--king' salary he had agreed to pay her during the campaign (classic Rodolfo!). And the Liga's two representatives have both said that they were not invited to the party, so they too are distanced from Rodolfo already.

In fun news, Senate president Roy Barreras has declared that Congress will now be pet-friendly, which will allow congressmen to bring their pets (this is going to be great). He introduced a dog he adopted during the pandemic, 'Covid' (why you'd name a little dog 'Covid' is beyond me). It's too bad Álvaro Uribe is no longer a senator so he could bring his pet horses to work.

https://twitter.com/RoyBarreras/status/1572357225930170369

[Sir John Johns]

Gustavo Petro has been dragged this week into a scandal over the alleged shady businesses conducted by his son, Nicolás, and his brother, Juan Fernando, and their possible ties with drug traffickers, a scandal I have hard time not finding at lot of similarities with the one in which Guillermo Lasso is currently embroiled in neighboring Ecuador (the presidential relative illegally managing public contracts and jobs + accusations of election campaign being financed by drug traffickers):

https://apnews.com/article/colombia-president-petro-brother-son-eca58b66d36655dc7d14afa1ce5dba7d

Nicolás Petro’s ex-partner, Day Vásquez, has said that he received improper money from donations to his father’s campaign.

In an interview with Semana magazine, Vásquez said the president’s son received more than 600 million Colombian pesos (about $125,000) from Samuel Santander Lopesierra, who is known as the “Marlboro Man” and was imprisoned in the United States for drug trafficking.

The donation “never legally reached the campaign because he kept the money as well as others,” Vásquez said without providing proof. She added that the president had no knowledge of the money.

There have also been complaints made against the president’s brother, Juan Fernando Petro, in connection with a network of lawyers and organizations that allegedly took money to link drug traffickers and people wanted for extradition with the government’s “total peace” program.

The case has been publicized by Semana, a right-wing weekly and not the best source if I understand correctly, but considered as potentially enough politically damaging to lead Petro requesting prosecutors to investigate the allegations (don’t understand if the investigation has been opening before or after the interview of Petro Jr.’s ex-partner in Semana). Petro’s son and brother have denied the accusations but Semana has just published a series of WhatsApp chats between Nicolás Petro and his then-partner (who provided herself the chats to Semana) in which the son of the president was supposedly discussing about negotiations of public jobs and contracts with officials and ministers and about buying a luxury house in Barranquilla with the money received (the plan for the purchase was subsequently abandoned). The right-wing press is also going after the supposed lavish lifestyle of Nicolás Petro.

This happening eight months before the local elections and when the Petro administration has became quite unpopular, the number of people not approving Petro having overcame those approving the president in the latest opinion polls.

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It hasn’t been a good couple of weeks for Petro. First he was forced to end the ceasefire with the Clan del Golfo (the country’s biggest cartel), and about a week ago he withdrew his proposed political reform. Now his health reform appears to be under threat, with allies from the traditional parties withdrawing support, and yesterday rebels from the ELN killed 9 soldiers at an army base in Norte de Santander.

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It hasn’t been a good couple of weeks for Petro. First he was forced to end the ceasefire with the Clan del Golfo (the country’s biggest cartel), and about a week ago he withdrew his proposed political reform. Now his health reform appears to be under threat, with allies from the traditional parties withdrawing support, and yesterday rebels from the ELN killed 9 soldiers at an army base in Norte de Santander.

It hasn't been a good year so far for Petro.

It began early, on NYE, with his Twitter announcement of a broad multilateral ceasefire with all armed groups including the ELN, until it turned out that Petro had basically preempted everything and announced a ceasefire with the ELN without actually talking to the ELN about that, forcing the government to suspend the ceasefire with the ELN four days later. In general terms, 'total peace' is really turning out to be total chaos and total improvisation, with the government trying to do everything at once but also improvising everything that it's doing, with no clear agenda or direction. I also think that the peace talks with the ELN, already in a pretty rough spot, risk getting bogged down into endless talk about a ceasefire - that's the government's priority now - which I think is counterproductive, although it's the most politically attractive and expedient thing to do. Santos' strategy of negotiating while the conflict continued, and using military force to pressure the FARC, was more politically risky but proved to be more successful. I think that the peace agreement with the FARC would either never have happened or taken even longer to reach if they had tried negotiating a bilateral ceasefire from the beginning. On top of that, from the looks of it, the ELN seems to be doing a good job of pulling the wool over the government's eyes and having them sign a ridiculous agenda that includes examining the 'economic model and political system' - the kind of crap maximalist agenda that contributed to the Caguán disaster. More generally, the government lacks a security policy, and if there is one it is rather weak and has allowed illegal armed groups to take advantage of the government's weakness to strengthen themselves.

Several security indicators, except for homicides, are not great, and law and order/security is becoming a very obvious weak flank for the government. Petro seems to have been spooked by 22 governors publishing the national motto, Libertad y Orden, on their social media (a trend which was then picked up by the right) - a thinly-veiled criticism of government policy which is exceedingly rare from governors, given their fiscal dependence on central government transfers. That seems to have pushed him to be more forceful: ending the ceasefire with the Clan del Golfo, summoning his negotiators in the ELN peace process for urgent consultations after the attack in the Catatumbo and holding a summit with Santos to discuss peace (but then Petro didn't show up, because he gave up his presidential plane to transport passengers stranded by an airline suspending its operations).

As for the legislative agenda, clearly not everything is going to plan. The healthcare reform is a total fiasco, but that was kind of predictable given that Petro ignored criticism within his cabinet (and fired the leading one, education minister Alejandro Gaviria) and pressed ahead with the 'extreme' text of his health minister, Carolina Corcho, a stubborn activist who clearly does a terrible job of listening to people, and he now finds himself in his current predicament. Instead of taking the three traditional parties' concerns seriously, Corcho and/or Petro ignored them and concocted an even more poorly written, sloppy text that has alienated the three party leaders (Gaviria, Toro and Efraín Cepeda). Petro would do well to remember that he needs them if he wants his agenda to even have a chance in Congress. I wrote a Substack post today here: https://colombiapolelxn.substack.com/p/petros-healthcare-reform-fiasco that explains the healthcare reform and its demise (?) in much more detail.

The political reform is the classic story of a more or less decent and well-intentioned - though still underwhelming - political reform getting turned into a 'Christmas tree', filled with micos (a political Colombianism that would probably translate as 'riders' but [even] more nefarious and self-serving). It's a tale as old as time in Colombian politics. The thing became unsalvageable and too much of a political liability for the Pacto and the government that it needed to be scrapped entirely, giving rise to a rather silly game where everybody denied ownership of the dead reform. I'm putting together another Substack post to explain it in greater detail.

The government's labour and especially pension reforms are much better texts - the labour reform is divisive and will lead to an ideological battle between improving workers' rights and conditions but increasing labour costs (left) and labour flexibility (right), while the pension reform will be the easiest to find consensus on because everyone can agree that a structural reform is urgently needed to fix a terrible system (and Petro's reform is not very radical and largely in line with what liberal think-tanks have proposed, for example).

Petro is repeating all of his past mistakes: governing by improvising, a certain arrogance and stubbornness, an excessive focus on symbolism and rhetoric at the expense of actual policy implementation, tweeting too much for his own good, ignoring real problems while talking about big ideas, wasting time over unnecessary fights because of his obsessions and now signs of turnover in his administration (Gaviria and two other ministers were fired in late February).

A bit outdated, but here's a post I wrote in February summarizing most of the first 6 months: https://colombiapolelxn.substack.com/p/colombian-politics-digest-v-six-months-3c29e8f94393. I really intend to get back into writing and posting some more here, and regularly.

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I've written another post about the death of the political reform here: https://colombiapolelxn.substack.com/p/the-death-of-petros-political-reform. I think it's quite good and is an entertaining glimpse into Colombian congressional politics and its different characters.

Essentially, as I said earlier, it's a classic story of a more or less well-intentioned - though still underwhelming and mediocre - political reform getting turned into a 'Christmas tree' by Congress and the government (the former to serve their interests, the latter to benefit their interests and to sweeten the deal for the former), filled with micos. In this specific case, there were 2 micos that led to the reform's early death: an transitional article, initially designed as part of a transition process to mandatory closed lists in 2026, that'd have allowed parties to take into account incumbent congressmen's order of election in 2022 when forming their lists in 2026 (even at the expense of gender parity/alternation that the closed lists were supposed to guarantee); and a modification to the rules of incompatibility for members of Congress that'd have allowed congressmen to immediately become cabinet ministers upon resigning (currently there is a one-year period of incompatibility after resigning), creating a 'revolving door'. The outrage and drama over these things made the reform untenable and unsalvageable, to the point where the government needed to turn its back on it suddenly and withdraw it to avoid the humiliation of it being defeated in commission (complete with Roy Barreras' great acting).

Unfortunately this likely means that there'll be (again) no real structural institutional or electoral reforms in Colombia in this term. Even if the government does try again, it'll be even more difficult to get any meaningful reform through in the future.

Looking to write about the labour and pension reforms in some detail next.

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I've written a long-ish post about the pension and labour reform proposals here.

The pension reform is broadly good and it would be a good thing if it passes (with modifications in the details). Colombia's current pension system is all-around terrible and woefully inefficient, from any way you look at it. It has two competing systems, a publicly-administered defined-benefits system and a private defined-contributions individual accounts (the 1980s Chilean model), and because of the nature of the labour market and average salaries, few people contribute to pensions and of those who contributed in their working lifetime a lot do not meet the qualifying conditions. Past attempts at fixing those problems are not without their merits but really are insufficient. Most pensioners are in the publicly-administered defined-benefits system, but most contributors today are in the defined-contributions individual accounts system. Moreover, the public system has very regressive implicit subsidies, with taxpayers heavily subsidizing mega-pensions paid out to a lucky few (because politicians and judges are the ones who get mega-pensions, any attempts at taxing pensions - like Petro tried doing in his tax reform last year - are quickly shot down as communist attempts to steal the middle-classes' hard-earned pension savings). Petro's proposal is a four-pillar system that would create a very basic non-contributory solidarity pension grant for ~2.5 million very poor seniors, a semi-contributory pillar for those who contributed but don't meet qualifying conditions and the main contributory pillar where *everyone* (employed with salaries over 1 minimum wage essentially) would contribute to the publicly-administered system on their earnings up to 3 minimum wages and to private funds for any earnings above that (only 15% or so earn over 3x the minimum wage so this would weaken the private funds a lot). The earnings threshold for contributions to private funds is high and could be lowered (most proposals suggest setting it at 1.5 to 2 minimum wages). The reform would have the virtue of reducing old-age poverty, reducing the outrageous regressive subsidies, expand coverage and integrate/coordinate the systems, but it doesn't do much to increase the number of contributors to the system and there are legitimate questions about its long-term sustainability. For those obsessed over retirement age, Colombia's retirement age is 62 (men)/57 (women) and Petro has said he'd resign before increasing it.

The labour reform is in line with Petro/the left's vision of labour relations: the main points are to strengthen employment stability by making indefinite term contracts the general rule and legislating strict limits on fixed-term contracts and other types of more 'precarious' contracts that are widely used and abused; strengthening trade unions and collective bargaining and improving workers' rights on things like night shift work and extra pay for holiday/night shift work (reversing parts of Uribe's 2002 labour reform). One of the main points of debate is the regulation of digital platforms (specifically delivery services), which would force digital platform workers to have labour contracts and enrolled in social security. As you can imagine the employers and businesses complain that this would increase labour costs and create an overly rigid structure. The Conservatives and the U have both already voiced criticism of the reform and the Conservatives have indicated they wouldn't support it in its current form.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I was inspired to look at Petro's approvals and noticed they are on a steady downward trend. Any idea if the pension and labor reform proposals could help reverse his currently poor fortunes if they succeed? I don't know much about Colombian politics, but there is a nonzero chance I will be moving there in the next few years so it would behoove me to learn a bit about what is going on there beyond basic stuff like Uribe being a murderer and Petro being a commie.

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     I was inspired to look at Petro's approvals and noticed they are on a steady downward trend. Any idea if the pension and labor reform proposals could help reverse his currently poor fortunes if they succeed? I don't know much about Colombian politics, but there is a nonzero chance I will be moving there in the next few years so it would behoove me to learn a bit about what is going on there beyond basic stuff like Uribe being a murderer and Petro being a commie.

It's hard to say but I'm skeptical. Both reforms are already not without controversy, and Petro is good at making things even more polarizing by tweeting about it, although the government will be needing a big legislative win before June and the adoption of either the pension and labour reforms could be good for keeping his base motivated. Though for all that could go well with these reforms, there's a bunch of other things that could go poorly and continue to drag him down - like the security situation and 'total peace' being managed by amateurs.

In recent news:

- The Conservatives and the Partido de la U, as well as the Liberals, had caucus meetings yesterday to set their caucus stance on the healthcare reform. The Conservatives and the U have effectively decided to give Petro one last chance, after Petro gave in and authorized interior minister Alfonso Prada to negotiate with the parties and review their complaints with the reform's current text. The two parties will present 133 amendments/proposals to the current text in the seventh commission of the House, where it is awaiting its first debate. The Liberals voted to follow what César Gaviria does, which may or may not be what the two other parties are currently doing. For the specifics of what the parties' complaints are, take a look at my Substack post. If Petro doesn't waste the final chance he's been given here, he has a chance at passing his healthcare reform, though one which will be quite far removed from the original proposal, particularly on key points like the fate of the EPS.

- Today Petro announced the resignation of the director of the police, Gen. Henry Sanabria, and replaced him with retired Gen. William Salamanca, who is currently consul in Miami. From the beginning, Sanabria attracted controversy for his old homophobic and misogynistic tweets and fanatic religious views, and it later turned out that his views hadn't evolved much since then. The breaking point was a rather surreal interview in Semana last month in which Sanabria said that the existence of the devil is certain and that he's seen him, that taking out his crucifix once dispersed thousands of protesters, that he'd used exorcisms in all big criminal operations including against Escobar and leaders of the FARC (like Mono Jojoy, Alfonso Cano and Raúl Reyes), that the criminals use witchcraft, mentioned a cop killing a criminal "praying while shooting", reiterated the misogynistic comments he'd tweeted on International Women's Day (basically that silent, discreet and submissive women are more attractive) and said that there are cases of HIV in the police because "unfortunately there is a big LGBTIQ community". In the face of widespread criticism on the left and pressure to fire Sanabria, Petro defended him, saying his religious beliefs were separate and that there is freedom of religion.

- Petro will appoint his old ally, Hollman Morris, as manager of RTVC, the public media system (which includes two TV channels and two radio stations). Morris was manager of Canal Capital, the local public TV channel in Bogotá, during Petro's administration (2012-2014). Morris is the bête noire of the Colombian feminist left because of the accusations of sexual assault and sexual harassment against him by his ex-partner (who now seems to have reconciled with him) and other women during the 2019 local elections, but the cases were closed earlier this year. Morris was a Bogotá city councillor (2016-2019), the petrista candidate in the 2019 mayoral election in the capital and ran for Senate on the list of Fuerza Ciudadana in 2022 (but did very poorly). Morris was also accused of political bias and censorship when he ran Canal Capital in Bogotá. The appointment has outraged the more hardened left-wing feminists. For all of his haughty feminist rhetoric, Petro still can't cut ties with men accused of sexual assault/harassment: Morris' appointment follows the failed diplomatic appointment as ambassador to the UAE of Víctor de Currea Lugo, a left-wing academic and expert of the Middle East with multiple accusations of sexual harassment going back nearly a decade from his years in academia.

- In local Polombia news: the mayor of Calima (El Darién) in Valle, Martín Mejía Londoño, was seen dancing drunk and naked in a nightclub. He later turned up in a hospital, claiming that he may have unwillingly consumed adulterated liquor or a dose of scopolamine, an accusation denied by the owner of the nightclub. Now he's tested positive for benzodiazepine.

https://twitter.com/WRadioColombia/status/1645782851395153920

Last summer, the same mayor turned up drunk on stage at a local festival and told the crowd that he is a thief (among other incoherent things).

[Sadader]

RIP Petro? Coalition seems to be officially done. Representatives removing the article that would empower Gov to buy land for farmers (in peace deal) seems to have been the last straw for Petro. Also, the commission did approve the text of the healthcare bill, but PSUN/PCC/PLC are telling members not to back it.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/colombian-president-petro-asks-cabinet-resign-ahead-reshuffle-sources-2023-04-26/

Wonder what happens from here. How can Petro even govern? Without congress I guess he can continue with executive action, but substantial pension/healthcare/labour reforms could end up dead. AFAIK Petro can declare a state of economic emergency for 90-days but that's formally limited to changing taxes temporarily (Duque used it to cut VAT)

Financial market probably freaks out lol. If Ocampo is permanently out after the reshuffle it could be quite bad.

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What happened is that Petro went mad/had a meltdown and decided to self-implode the coalition, which was already very tenuous, in large because his stubborn obstinacy to push through a flawed, poorly-written and divisive healthcare reform is doomed to fail sooner or later, and Petro cannot handle criticism. Petro and Corcho repeatedly failed to heed concerns and comments about the healthcare reform, even within cabinet last year and early this year, and then refused to compromise with the coalition parties on it even when they - particularly the U and the Conservatives - gave them several opportunities to do so. Exploiting the internal divisions of the coalition parties and weaknesses of their leaders has allowed Petro et al. to keep the healthcare reform alive for longer than I expected, but it is still due to blow up in his face at some point. The last straw was largely the continued pains of the healthcare reform and the three statements from the party leaderships reiterating their opposition to it (and Gaviria again threatening disciplinary sanctions for his caucus people who don't obey his diktat) -- after Petro got lucky and the commission adopted the positive rapporteurs' report last night (because one Liberal representative voted in favour, and three Conservative/U reps left to reduce the quorum and allow its adoption 10-8).

Petro believes that he's been forced to listen to the coalition parties on this and other issues and that he's gotten nothing in return, so his patience and conciliatory attitude has run out and now he's kind of flipped out and proclaimed the end of the coalition and the necessity of 'rethinking the government'. From Petro's general personality, behaviour and current attitude this implies a populist radicalization of the government, pitting 'the people' (never mind his disapproval on its way to 60% soon) versus the traditional parties/Congress/elites/institutions blocking the change he claims to have a mandate to implement, and telling the moderates/pragmatists in the room to get lost.

Last night Petro asked for all his ministers' resignations and did a big shuffle today. The changes are:

Finance: José Antonio Ocampo out, replaced by Ricardo Bonilla. This is a big coup that will unsettle the markets and a lot of centrists/moderates, who trusted Ocampo as the moderate voice of reason and financial stability in cabinet and the unofficial leader of the liberal-centrist technocrats against the leftists in cabinet. Bonilla is more of a Petro loyalist - he worked on his campaign, was an adviser during the transition and was his finance secretary in Bogotá. He is also a Keynesian with an academic background, but likely more in tune with Petro's economic views than Ocampo.

Agriculture: Cecilia López out, replaced by Jhenifer Mojica. Cecilia López is an unfortunate loss as she was proving to be a solid, competent and reasonable agriculture minister, but Petro had lost patience with her for not going as fast as he wants. She was also one of the prominent voices of the liberal-centrist faction in cabinet with Ocampo, and, formerly, Alejandro Gaviria. Her replacement is not well known, but close to Petro and was director of ethnic affairs in the land restitution unit since last fall.

Interior: Alfonso Prada out, replaced by Luis Fernando Velasco. Prada, one of the leading ex-santistas/liberals in cabinet, was worn out by his difficulties in managing the government's legislative agenda and the coalition (in part he was probably stymied by Corcho/Petro) and some other issues. He's replaced by another veteran 'moderate' politician, former Liberal senator Luis Fernando Velasco, who was 24 years in Congress (since 1998). He was regional adviser to Petro and caretaker director of the disaster management agency.

Transportation: Guillermo Reyes out, replaced by William Camargo. Good riddance: Reyes was a Conservative 'quota' who lost his worth when his benefactor, Carlos Andrés Trujillo, was ousted from the Conservative leadership earlier this year. Reyes had also proven to be quite incompetent, doing a poor job at managing the suspension of Viva Air and Ultra Air's operations. Camargo is the current president of the national infrastructure agency, ANI, and was head of Bogotá urban development agency when Petro was mayor, where he structured plans for Petro's underground metro that Petro remains obsessed about.

ICT: Sandra Urrutia out, replaced by Mauricio Lizcano. Urrutia was a quota of the U, and is replaced by Mauricio Lizcano, who gets shuffled over from being administrative director of the presidency (DAPRE), where he had a rather rocky tenure and had lost Petro's confidence. Lizcano is a veteran caldense politician who served three terms in Congress and now manages his own partido de bolsillo/unipersonalist shell party.

Health: Carolina Corcho out, replaced by Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo. A surprise given that Petro was quite defensive of her but perhaps a signal that he can still read the room - Corcho was a disastrous minister, a stubborn, dogmatic activist who clearly could not manage a ministry and healthcare reform. Good riddance. Jaramillo is a doctor and experienced politician - he was Petro's health secretary and later government secretary in Bogotá but also has a long political career of his own in Tolima, going back to the 1970s, as representative, governor, senator and mayor of Ibagué. He was currently one of the petrista pre-candidates for mayor of Bogotá this year. He has his work cut out for him, but he's an experienced politician and not an activist like Corcho.

Science: Arturo Luna out, replaced by Yesenia Olaya Requene. A little-known minister is replaced by one of his vice-ministers.

DAPRE: Carlos Ramón González replaces Mauricio Lizcano. González is a sketchy, probably corrupt, apparatchik who was co-president of the Greens - close to Petro, with a M-19 background like him. He will likely regain control of the management of bureaucratic quotas and patronage.

Catalina Velasco (housing) and Néstor Osuna (justice), despite being seen as close to the Liberals (and Velasco as a 'quota'), kept their jobs. This plus Velasco coming in at interior signals that Petro wants to exploit the growing divisions in the Liberal Party and incipient rebellion against Gaviria, by  Iván Velásquez stays at defence, despite his difficulties in imposing his leadership on the armed forces and the defence sector, contradicting rumours that he'd be on the way out. Álvaro Leyva stays on as foreign minister despite a chaotic and, honestly, mediocre, record so far.

The changes show that Petro wants a team that is close and loyal to him, dedicated to him and his agenda. Ocampo and López had the experience, age and intellectual weight to contradict Petro and be counterweights. The reshuffled cabinet lacks anyone like that now.

Petro will also further shift towards belligerent populism - he is preparing a grand 'return to the balcony' (a gathering of supporters as he speaks from the balcony of the presidential palace), even though his first attempt at that in February was a huge flop.

The coalition was dying and was going to die at some point. Petro wanted to dump them before they dumped him. Instead he'll try to negotiate directly with congressmen rather than through the party leaderships, which is not without its promises but is risky and unclear how well it will work. He's smart enough to know that he can't govern with Congress, but his gobernabilidad is now severely damaged/weakened.

This is still all quite reminiscent of Petro's time as mayor, complete with the high turnover in his cabinet. I fear that this administration/president is refusing to admit its mistakes, let alone learn from them, and is taking a very risky and quite dangerous turn for the worse.

I'll try to write something longer on my Substack about this before I go on vacation.

[Hash]

I'll try to write something longer on my Substack about this before I go on vacation.

Here you go: https://colombiapolelxn.substack.com/p/rethinking-the-government-the-death.

I also previously wrote a long post about the proliferation of political parties for those interested in the party system: https://colombiapolelxn.substack.com/p/the-proliferation-of-colombian-political

I'll be gone for two weeks so hopefully Petro doesn't do anything too insane during this time.

[Hash]

So several things happened in May and June. A fair summary would be that Petro's administration is really not going that well, and it's unlikely to improve much in the short or medium term.

Undoubtedly the biggest thing single thing has been the Sarabia-Benedetti scandal, a rather complicated and multifaceted scandal which involves a nanny, stolen cash, a polygraph test, illegal wiretaps, betrayals, blackmail, juicy leaked audio recordings, a suicide and a lot of theories and rumours. I will let my own post (quite long) tell the fully story.

Essentially, in late May, right-wing Semana magazine revealed that Petro's chief of staff Laura Sarabia - who had quickly become his closest confidante, right-hand woman, gatekeeper and go-to person over just 9 months - had a polygraph test administered on her former nanny, suspecting her of stealing a suitcase with an unclear amount of cash (officially $7,000, unofficially rumours swirl). Sarabia claimed that the nanny willingly acceded, the nanny strongly disputed this version in speaking to the press. The presidency claimed this was legal and not an abuse of power or misuse of state resources, because it was a national security matter and because 'Duque did it too' (this lousy excuse has somehow become petrismo's defence for a lot of things, after spending 4 years [rightfully] saying that Duque was horrible). It was later revealed that around the time the polygraph was done - late January - the nanny was also illegally wiretapped by the police for about 10 days, her number having been mysteriously included on a list of organized crime numbers by an agent in Chocó. Illegal wiretaps are bad, but particularly so for a Petro administration, because Petro was a victim of the chuzadas scandal under Uribe (illegal wiretaps of political opponents by the corrupt-criminal former intelligence agency, DAS) so a left-wing government accused of chuzadas is a bad look. It's also a bad look when a Pacto senator like Clara López, who isn't a lightweight (unlike a fair number of Pacto people), says that you can't compare wiretapping a court to wiretapping a 'servant'.

Sarabia's people strongly suspect that this story was fed to the press as blackmail by her former mentor, Petro's ambassador to Venezuela and political chameleon extraordinaire Armando Benedetti, who was pissed that he wasn't properly rewarded for his services to the 2022 campaign and getting bored in Caracas (and bitter that Sarabia forgot about him and what she owed him). On June 1, Petro was forced to dismiss both of them, being saddest about having to lose Sarabia.

Semana leaked some very explosive and juicy audio recordings of voice messages from Benedetti to Sarabia, in which Benedetti is angry, emotional, unstable and threatening to spill the beans on bad stuff he knows about the money in the 2022 campaign (in his words: enough to end the world and to send all of them to jail), including a claim that he got 15,000 million pesos for the campaign and saying that he knows who gave money to the campaign on the Caribbean coast (read: narcos). The leaked audio recordings contain other juicy stuff too. Benedetti quickly claimed that the audios had been manipulated, and then blamed them on him getting drunk while being pissed off at how Petro et al. were treating him. Petro has denied the allegation that his campaign illegally received 15,000 million pesos but this has opened investigations by the prosecutors and the electoral administration for illegal campaign financing and breaking spending limits. Later, Semana published the testimony of a 'confidential source' claiming that Sarabia's stolen cash was actually 3,000 million pesos and that it belonged to Petro, a rather outlandish claim (not corroborated or confirmed by any other source) and Semana has mysteriously let this storyline die out without building on it - perhaps they were spooked by Petro's thinly-veiled threat to the magazine's corporate owners (the Gilinski family) that he could stop playing nice and hinder their corporate ambitions.

(there's much more to this story so I again suggest reading my Substack post above for a more thorough and complete runthrough)

Obviously this scandal is quite damaging to Petro and the government - it's a bad look, smells very rotten, has established some very strong rumours/claims that the campaign engaged in criminal/illegal activities and narco ties and further confirms that the administration's ethical behaviour is just as bad as those of previous administrations which is not something to aim for when you sell yourself as the 'government of change'. The scandal has boosted the standing of Petro's two enemies within the state apparatus - attorney general Francisco Barbosa (Duque's old college buddy) and inspector general Margarita Cabello (Duque's former justice minister) - and given them a mightily powerful thing to wave over his head for the next few months. The scandal has further reinforced Petro's paranoid/conspirationist tendencies (he has, given his life, good reason to be in general) and lean into the view that this is all a plot by his enemies and part of the 'soft coup' against him. Petro's soft coup theory is largely a mix of paranoid-brain conspiracy theories, him being haunted by what happened to Castillo in Peru and far-fetched conjectures all loosely based on facts and certain events not necessarily related to each other, but it's gotten the support of the global left (the likes of Mélenchon, Corbyn, Correa and other greats).

In legislative news, following the collapse of the governing coalition in Congress, Petro's big reformist agenda has largely ran aground. The government is obstinate about its healthcare reform and managed to survive to continue its way through Congress in the upcoming sessions (opening on July 20), and the government will likely continue to be focused on this one at the expense of others, but will still face serious difficulties. The pension reform also managed to survive to continue after July 20 by being approved in commission (first debate) on June 14, with the bare minimum votes needed. The labour reform, however, died because it failed to be approved in commission before the end of the last legislative term (June 20). The government's prison reform and surrender to justice (for criminal organizations/gangs) bills also failed. While not a government initiative (though supported by it and the Pacto), an amendment to legalize marijuana unfortunately failed in its very last debate in the Senate on June 21. The outlook for the 2023-24 legislative term is not very good for the government. In part because the focus from now until the end of October will be the local elections, being held on October 29.

The Congress will also need to get around to electing a new comptroller general after the Council of State in late May annulled the election of the government-friendly comptroller elected in August 2022, Carlos Hernán Rodríguez, because of various irregularities in the election procedure last summer. I wrote a post about this too with much more details, if you're interested.

[Hash]

Mines and energy minister Irene Vélez has resigned. Her resignation came after allegations of nepotism and abuse of power which are under investigation.

Vélez was one of the most controversial ministers in cabinet from day one: she is an academic and environmental activist who had no experience or expertise in mining or energy except for her activism and research on the impact of illegal mining on the environment and black/indigenous communities. But she was ideologically and philosophically in tune with Petro on the energy transition and opposition to fossil fuels. Vélez's father, Hildebrando Vélez, also an academic and activist, is close to Vice President Francia Márquez.

She was a very unusual pick for that portfolio - past ministers have usually tended to be technocrats and close to the mining/energy sector - so she obviously ruffled feathers, something she took pride in today in her letter of resignation. But her difficulties in the role and several gaffes made clear that she lacked the experience and expertise for the job, and that she managed the portfolio as a dogmatic activist (much like former health minister Corcho). She announced that the government would no longer sign new contracts for oil and gas exploration (a key campaign promise), based on an inaccurate and misleading report and was accused of lying by her former vice minister. She had regular disagreements and contradictions with other ministers, notably the finance ministry. She lost two vice ministers who resigned because of differences with her, and one of them, Belissa Ruiz, went public with her disagreements and disputes. Vélez survived two motions of no confidence by the opposition in Congress, and she was, in general, a favourite target of the opposition and opposition-aligned media, as can be seen by this tweet today from CR:

https://twitter.com/PCambioRadical/status/1681644246883790848

However, Petro favours loyalty and ideological affinities, so he defended her through all these controversies. What forced her resignation were the recent revelations that her husband had obtained a contract from a government agency and that she personally pressured a Migración Colombia official (the border control agency) to let her son leave the country with their father without the proper legal paperwork (Colombia requires a notarized authorization form for minors to leave the country alone or with only one parent). These issues are now under investigation by the Fiscalía and Procuraduría. Her letter of resignation said that she was stepping aside to avoid that the investigations against her interfere with the government's agenda. Petro tweeted that her resignation was voluntary and defended her, saying that not a peso had been lost and that important progress had been made for the energy transition and a new mining code.

No successor announced yet. Irene Vélez's resignation brings to 11 the number of original ministers who have resigned or been fired, out of 18 ministers appointed in August 2022.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

No successor announced yet. Irene Vélez's resignation brings to 11 the number of original ministers who have resigned or been fired, out of 18 ministers appointed in August 2022.

11 ministers (almost 2/3), in as many (11) months. Is this unprecedented in Colombian history?

[Oryxslayer]

No successor announced yet. Irene Vélez's resignation brings to 11 the number of original ministers who have resigned or been fired, out of 18 ministers appointed in August 2022.

11 ministers (almost 2/3), in as many (11) months. Is this unprecedented in Colombian history?

TBH this wasn't unexpected. The government coalition collapsed and Petro's previous tenure in Bogota was similar.

[Hash]

No successor announced yet. Irene Vélez's resignation brings to 11 the number of original ministers who have resigned or been fired, out of 18 ministers appointed in August 2022.

11 ministers (almost 2/3), in as many (11) months. Is this unprecedented in Colombian history?

Petro changed nearly three-fifths of his cabinet in under a year when he was mayor of Bogotá, but I can't think of a similar rate of burning through cabinet ministers at the national level. Santos had fairly frequent turnover in some portfolios but nothing quite like this.

**

Today is July 20, both the national day and the start of the second year of congressional sessions. The first session will last until December 16. The congressional leadership changes each year, so the new presidents of both houses will be elected today. The session will open with a speech from Petro, the first time he will speak before a joint session of Congress (he was not yet president when this Congress met for the first time last July).

The presidencies of the Senate and the House 'correspond' to the Greens and Liberals respectively in 2023-24, according to the political agreements between the parties last year. Except that this year both parties are internally divided and were unable to agree on a single candidate, so there will be multiple candidates competing (from the same party) in both houses.

In the Senate, the hopelessly divided and fractious Greens selected Angélica Lozano in a caucus vote last night (she won 8 out of 13 votes) but two of her rivals, Inti Asprilla and Iván Name, didn't recognize the result and will put their names in the mix. Lozano is the wife of Bogotá mayor Claudia López and a competent, hard-working legislator who has several laws to her name over three terms in Congress (in the House from 2014 to 2018 and in the Senate since 2018). Lozano is more independent from the administration. Inti Asprilla is a petrista Green who was elected to the Senate in 2022 after two terms in the House. He's the son of the late Guillermo Asprilla, an old M-19 companion of Petro who served in Petro's cabinet in Bogotá. Iván Name, from the influential Name family in Barranquilla (his cousin is U senator José David Name), has been in the Senate since 2010 but rarely features in the headline and seems to have few notable legislative achievements to speak of. He is one of the most anti-Petro senators in the Greens. Name's candidacy is gaining steam with the backing of the Partido de la U and probably the opposition and independent (traditional) parties, while the government seems to be supporting Lozano to prevent Name from winning.

In the House, the Liberals are also quite divided (obviously). Three Liberals are in contention: Córdoba rep. Andrés Calle (one of the most petrista Liberals), Antioquia rep. Julián Peinado (one of the most vocal anti-Petro opposition Liberals) and Putumayo rep. Carlos Ardila (more centrist and independent). The government is obviously lobbying hard for Calle, who was the first Liberal congressman to endorse Petro's presidential candidacy in 2022.

Gustavo Petro spent the morning in San Andrés, a symbolic show of Colombian sovereignty triumphant just a few days after Colombia 'won' the latest round in the maritime border dispute with Nicaragua at the ICJ (Colombia lost the most important round in 2012 but last week the ICJ rejected Nicaraguan claims to an extended continental shelf). Getting a bit carried away, Petro tweeted this amazing thing last night

https://twitter.com/petrogustavo/status/1681786706503008257

In which he says that for the first time in 200 years under his government the country has not lost territory and has defended its sovereignty. He notably lists that 'they lost the Mosquito coast, they lost Panama, they lost the Los Monjes archipelago, they lost Amazonian rainforest, they lost 75,000km2 of Caribbean sea'. Get in loser, we're retaking Panama this July 20! O, gloria inmarcesible!

[Hash]

Incredible.

Iván Name was elected president of the Senate last night with 54 votes against 50 votes for Angélica Lozano (and one invalid vote, apparently somebody who voted for both). A searing defeat for the government, which had endorsed Lozano. A big show of strength by the opposition and independent parties.

The government convinced Inti Asprilla, the leftist Green, to withdraw, which he did so very begrudgingly while complaining about how it was unjust, and convinced their own caucus to support Lozano, not without some kicking and screaming from some Pacto senators (and, outside Congress, by petrista barras bravas) who really, really hate Lozano.

Name's speech in which he nominated himself was a bizarre, disjointed and somewhat incoherent speech/tirade with lots of hand gestures and yelling. A speech so weird that a lot of people speculated that he was drunk. His speech talked about how partidocracia is destroying Western democracies, how democracies need many parties, centralism, federalism, the talents of revolutions and revolutionaries, the boots of the founding fathers, autonomous regions, presidentialism, the dignity of the Senate and celebrated Pacto congressmen as 'florituras'. His main promise was to remove time limits on senators' speeches.

The election is by secret ballot so there's no way of knowing for sure, but political journalists believe he most likely got 14 Conservatives, 13 CD, 11 CR, 10 La U plus himself which would leave five votes unaccounted for: either from the Liberals, who are believed to have voted for Lozano, or dissidents from the Pacto (most likely Paulino Riascos, an annoying guy who has become a hindrance for the Pacto). The opposition celebrated Name's victory as theirs, although two Pacto senators were seen celebrating with wine shortly after the election.

In the House, Andrés Calle was elected in a more traditional fashion, with Peinado and Ardila withdrawing and allowing him to be the only candidate. This is a victory for the government as Calle is one of the most pro-government Liberals, and a defeat for Liberal boss César Gaviria, who is increasingly opposed to the government.

Interior minister Luis Fernando Velasco comes out looking quite bad and battered from this, given that he told La Silla Vacía just before that 'on paper' the government had 65 votes in the Senate. Really not a good start, at least in the Senate, to year two in Congress, despite today's attempts to put a brave face on it.

[PSOL]

https://twitter.com/AmericaElige/status/1709053312350158892

While I am hearing that the poll may be inaccurate, I would just like to be sure.

[Jingizu]

I politely request Hash do another update, with a special focus on Petro’s foreign policy covering his entire term so far, since it’s in the news a lot.

[MRCVzla]

I politely request Hash do another update, with a special focus on Petro’s foreign policy covering his entire term so far, since it’s in the news a lot.

A lot of news happen as Petro is/was open to broke-up relations with Israel in order to full-support Palestine.

Also an proper update of the upcoming Regional and Local elections who are to be hold in two weeks (October 29), in a attempt or short rundown, a lot of "civic" movements and coalitions running, in Bogotá seems it's the good one for "new liberal" Carlos Fernando Galán, disputed second race between petrista writer/Senator Gustavo Bolívar and former DANE (Statistics institute) director Juan Daniel Oviedo, in Antioquia the favorite is former governor Luís Perez (supported by ASI, CR or Roy Barreras party) but uribista Andrés Rendón is close, Fico Gutiérrez is on a road to a landslide in Medellín, Partido de la U' lideresa Dilian Francisca Toro seems to return to the Governorship of Valle del Cauca (while in Cali mayorship, the race is between liberal Roberto Ortiz and conservative-supported Alejandro Éder), in Barranquilla is expected another landslide for Alejandro Char in its potential third non-consecutive run as Mayor (elected in 2007 and 2015)... and Rodolfo Hernández was barred to run in Santander.

[Jingizu]

I politely request Hash do another update, with a special focus on Petro’s foreign policy covering his entire term so far, since it’s in the news a lot.

A lot of news happen as Petro is/was open to broke-up relations with Israel in order to full-support Palestine.

Amongst other moves, yes. I’m curious what if anything the Colombian people think about the severe changes in foreign policy Petro has enacted.

[Hash]

Sorry, I neglected this thread, but I've written a lot about these elections elsewhere on my Substack.

I have a general preview post here, longer detailed posts about Bogotá and Medellín and a general page about the structure of local government here.

Although many people will try to make these elections into a sort of midterm election about the national government and the Petro administration (with the right-wing opposition and many right-wing candidates campaigning against Petro and making them a 'referendum' against Petro), these are local elections and are basically over 1,100 separate elections where candidates, coalitions, parties and partisan strategies/alliances differ from place to place (even within the same department), confounding national political orientations, and the issues are obviously local. Nevertheless, national considerations do influence the vote, particularly in major cities and departments, and these elections are an important test for national political leaders as they are the only elections between congressional-presidential electoral cycles.

Petro's Pacto Histórico will have a bad election--a combination of Petro's unpopularity, weak candidates, internal divisions (the Pacto being a coalition of a dozen parties it was impossible to put them all together in most places), local factors and the difficulties faced by new parties/movements to break through at the local level where traditional parties and machines remain strong (the uribista CD faced similar challenges and has only won regional power by accomodating itself with dominant clans). Among the largest cities, only in Bogotá is the Pacto's candidate relatively strong and even there they'll likely lose by a large margin. It is likely to be a similar story in governors' races.

It will be nearly impossible to read anything into the results nationally because of the uncontrolled proliferation of political parties (35 at the time registrations closed, courtesy of the CNE deciding that the constitution doesn't apply to them and giving party recognition to anybody asking for it), numerous coalitions and 'independent' candidates who obtained ballot access by collecting signatures.

In contrast with 2015 and 2019, the elections in the biggest cities appear rather uncompetitive, with clear favourites in Bogotá, Bucaramanga and perhaps Cartagena, and quasi-predefined winners in Medellín and Barranquilla. Upsets in those cities would require abnormally large polling errors (larger than the polling errors in 2019), which are not impossible in local elections (which always see big surprises).

The major issues in many cities are security/criminality (crimes like robberies have increased significantly across Colombia in recent years) and mobility/transportation (public transit systems are in rather uniformly terrible shape in most major cities). The focus on security has meant that most candidates across the country are campaigning on hardline, 'mano dura' promises and often competing to see who can come up with the most soundbite-generating stupid 'solutions' (which invariably involve a mix of drones, 'Big Data', facial recognition cameras, AI, rapid response teams, armoured cars etc. as if even the poorest towns in Colombia were Singapore). On the right, the popularity of Nayib Bukele, who has received widespread adulation in the right-wing press for getting into embarrassingly childish Twitter fights with Petro (in which Bukele invariably came off better), means that many candidates are being called local Bukeles or proclaiming their love for him (one candidate in Cúcuta has even copied Bukele's party name and colour). More concerningly, the difficult integration of Venezuelan migrants and the participation of some Venezuelans in local criminality has made migrants the perfect scapegoats and targets for politicians and candidates (not only on the right: outgoing centre-left Bogotá mayor Claudia López has very disappoitingly used cheap xenophobic scapegoating to avoid taking responsibility for her failed security policies), with some candidates campaigning on promises to crack down on 'Venezuelan criminals'.

Here's a very brief rundown of the major races - for more details, please see my Substack posts.

MAYOR

Bogotá: For the first time this year, following a 2019 constitutional amendment, a second round is to be held (in 3 weeks) if no candidate wins over 40% of the vote with at least a 10-point difference with the runner-up. The clear frontrunner is Carlos Fernando Galán, who finished second in 2019 (and previously ran in 2011), who is at or above 40% in nearly all polls. Galán is running at a centrist with an upbeat, conciliatory tone and a platform of relative continuity/stability with the outgoing administration of Claudia López (with some differences), with one of his campaign arguments having been to complain that successive administrations in Bogotá come in and undo much of what their predecessors did because of petty personal vendettas (the most famous example being the vendetta between Petro and Enrique Peñalosa, two giant narcissists). He appeals to those who are longing for stability and calm after the years of unproductive political fights and squabbles which have meant that relatively little has gotten down in Bogotá while most problems worsened. Galán also has welcomed and accepted support from other parties and politicians and has the most machine support (notably Liberal and some Green machines), which he has justified with usual refrain that 'there are good people everywhere' and that those who support him did so without negotiating anything in exchange (which is obviously not true). This has opened him to attacks that he's compromised himself by allying with traditional clientelistic machines and adopted a 'todo vale' (anything goes) style of politics (the Galán brothers do have a history of lending their surname as cover for some pretty bad people). 

The Pacto's candidate is Gustavo Bolívar, a former petrista senator and screenwriter, who only really appeals to the radical left base and is hated by everyone else who isn't a petrista loyalist, because his abrasive personality and his political background since 2018 has made him toxic to the right (who think he's essentially a terrorist sympathizer) and the centre (who think he's a radical firebrand). Bolívar's campaign has done very little to broaden his appeal and mostly focused on mobilizing the left-wing base, with support from the government, with a left-wing campaign against 'traditional machines' and Claudia López. He has been unable to grow out of the low 20s in the polls and trails Galán by 30+ points in runoff matchups. Because Petro often behaves as if he were mayor of Bogotá (when he's not tweeting 100 times a day about Gaza), he has been unable to help himself to stick his nose in the campaign, in the form of embarking on a one-man crusade against every reasonable person in the world for the cause of making the Bogotá metro (currently slowly being as an elevated line built based on the contract awarded in 2019 by Peñalosa, after having been promised by every mayor since the 1960s) underground, largely because Petro is still very upset that Peñalosa scrapped his plans for an underground metro in 2015. Given that everyone just wants for the metro to finally get built, Petro's crusade has very little support (regardless of how correct he may be in the abstract about this), but this has never stopped him.

If there is a runoff, the one candidate who could beat Bolívar for second spot is Juan Daniel Oviedo, a centrist technocrat/academic (and openly gay) who was director of the statistical agency under Duque. Oviedo has run a good campaign and has solid ideas, but has remained in the high teens or low 20s and not able to grow despite having good favourable numbers and theoretical appeal both to the centre-left and centre-right.

The other candidates who have been weak (below 10%) in polls include former senator Rodrigo Lara (centre-right, with a personal vendetta against Galán, very anti-López), Duque's former defence minister Diego Molano (of 'accidentally' bombing civilians and 'child soldiers are machines of war' fame), former national police chief Jorge Luis Vargas (CR's candidate) and former senator Jorge Enrique Robledo (centre-left but hates Petro, allied with Sergio Fajardo, who is even more irrelevant than ever).

Medellín: Former mayor (2016-19) and 2022 right-wing presidential candidate Fico Gutiérrez will win very easily on the back of a simplistic anti-Petro and anti-Daniel Quintero (incumbent mayor) campaign and a vague nostalgia for a simpler time where everybody loved one another in Medellín (don't ask when this was). Daniel Quintero, elected in 2019 in a surprise victory against uribismo as an 'independent' young fresh alternative has turned out to be a great disappointment, revealing himself to a deceitful charlatan and snake oil salesman (not unlike Fico!), dividing and polarizing the city by going on the warpath against uribismo and the powerful Antioquian business elite (the GEA), breaking the model of public-private cooperation that had defined municipal governance since the early 2000s, with rather little to show for it. He also allied with plenty of unsavoury politicians and clans, as well as a tight-knit inner circle of loyalists, the sort of things that have unsurprisingly led to many corruption scandals and controversies. Quintero has become very unpopular (the only mayor of the city with net-negative approvals in over 20+ years!), which, granted, is due in part to the city's traditionally right-wing establishment media discovering investigative journalism (let's just hope they keep this talent). Because the left is so weak in Antioquia, petrismo/the Pacto has been pushed into a marriage of convenience with quinterismo (which got their own party, Independientes, legally recognized), which serves both of their interests (Quintero wants to be president in 2026). Fico is leading by 40+ points in the polls, with a promise to 'reunite the city' and 'rebuild trust', not mentioning that his own record as mayor was quite bad and that he was only so popular because he's a folksy showman who spent a lot of money on vain self-promo. His main rival is Quintero's candidate, Juan Carlos Upegui, who is Quintero's wife's cousin and a Quintero loyalist for a decade, who has the support of most of the Pacto. Quintero resigned from office in late September in order to openly campaign for Upegui (who wasn't taken off - and still isn't). A whole slew of other candidates are trying to exist, many as a 'third way' in a polarized campaign, to no avail. One of them is Albert Corredor, a renegade ex-uribista former councillor and quinterista dissident (though now at war with Quintero for refusing to drop out), who has forcibly enlisted the support of the education secretariat (an agency which Quintero allowed him to colonize).

Cali: This is the only close race among the major cities, with final polls showing a tie. The race is between Roberto 'el Chontico' Ortíz, a 'self-made' lottery businessman who finished second in both 2015 and 2019, a populist who sells himself as man of the people (he has his own charitable foundation that he claims has 'given back' to the poor) with strong support in low-income areas (and no discernable ideology besides opportunism), and Alejandro Éder (who finished third in 2019), the scion of one of the region's wealthiest families (owners of Manuelita, a big agroindustrial corporation) although his career has been separate from the family business (he was head of the reingration agency during Santos' first term, and later headed a business-led private non-profit), who has quite extensive support from parties (both centrist and right-wing) and is the candidate of the business elites (a group which has helped elect two previous mayors). Éder has gained strength and closed the gap with Ortíz with the withdrawal of several candidates in his favour, most notably Diana Rojas (an independent former councillor running as an anti-political machines candidate) and Duque's former justice minister Wilson Ruiz. Éder has claimed that Ortíz is the continuity candidate of the deeply unpopular corrupt and incompetent petrista-Green mayor Jorge Iván Ospina (he is right that most of the political class which backed Ospina in 2019 are now with Ortíz, like the Liberals and most of La U). Ortíz has attacked Éder as a previleged 'rich kid' backed by the 'upper classes' who doesn't understand social realities. Two other candidates which lag behind with some support are Miyerlandi Torres, who was Ospina's health secretary during COVID and is Dilian Francisca Toro's cousin (but not supported by her), and the Pacto's candidate Danis Rentería, a retired soldier who ran for a Christian right party in 2019 and later served in Ospina's administration (his past has divided the Pacto and not all the coalition is fully behind him). Rentería's main argument is that he's Petro's candidate, to the point where he used a fake AI-generated simulated voice of Petro in a campaign video (which got him scolded by his own party).

Barranquilla: Despite everything that's happened to them over the past few years (too long to list!), Alex Char will triumphantly return to a third term as mayor of Barranquilla (after 2008-11 and 2016-19) and seal charismo's control of the city for 20 consecutive years in 2007. Discussing charismo is fascinating (they're one of the most interesting families in Colombian politics and urgently need a TV show made about them) but too long for this one post, but in short charismo is hegemonic in Barranquilla since 2007 thanks to a mix of (relatively) efficient and competent governance (coming in the wake of a disastrous series of corrupt, incompetent administrations in the 90s who destroyed and bankrupted the city, charismo has built its public rhetoric on the 'Barranquilla miracle' and the 'cement revolution' of big infrastructure projects; Char left office in 2019 with 95% approvals), a lack of strong opposition, control over all local institutions and the distribution of big contracts to a select few mega-contractors with friendly ties to the Char. To the Bogotan public opinion, since 2018/2020 or so, the Char have become the symbol of corrupt, clientelistic machine politics and the family's image has been badly damaged in the national public opinion by several scandals, the main one being the Aída Merlano 2018 vote buying scandal (another crazy thing too long to discuss here), which has recently led to the arrest of Alex's brother, former senator Arturo Char, on a Supreme Court investigation against him for vote buying. Locally, however, charismo remains quite solid and still lacks any credible opposition. The left here is an absolute shipwreck--the Nicolás Petro scandal has further buried a local left already discredited by the corrupt and disastrous administrations of father Bernardo 'el Cura' Hoyos' left-wing populist Movimiento Ciudadano in the 1990s and early 2000s. Char's main token rival is the Polo/Pacto's candidate Antonio Bohórquez, who finished second to the charista candidate Jaime Pumarejo in 2019.

Bucaramanga: The favourite is self-proclaimed Bukele admirer and evangelical pastor Jaime Andrés Beltrán, a three-term councillor who has spent the last 8 years trying to be mayor (he finished second in 2019). Beltrán has gained strength with his Bukele-style hardline discourse on security and criminality, mixed with anti-immigrant rhetoric (in 2022 he promoted 'stick therapy', or vigilante justice). With his 'padlock plan', Beltrán seems to be under the impression that mayors have the power to install immigration checkpoints at municipal borders to keep Venezuelans out. Hiding behind him are a lot of the unsavoury old political clans of Santander, including parts of the old Aguilar clan (led by parapolítico Hugo Aguilar and his corrupt sons, former governor Richard and incumbent governor Mauricio), La U and uribismo (led locally by the Villamizar clan). Three or four candidates are way behind him, tied for second: former Liberal senator Horacio José Serpa (the son of the late santandereano Liberal politician Horacio Serpa), criticized for having lived in Bogotá most of his life; former councillor Fabián Oviedo, who claims to be independent while being implicitly supported by unpopular outgoing mayor Juan Carlos Cárdenas and Richard Aguilar; Green candidate Carlos Parra, the 'alternative' candidate; and Consuelo Ordóñez, a public official with ties to the Liberals, supported by the Nuevo Liberalismo and Rodolfo Hernández's Liga (even though she was very critical of Rodolfo when he was mayor).

Cartagena: Four years after the dominant corrupt machines and clans were dealt a surprise blow with the election of William Dau, they are likely to return to power via former governor (2016-19) Dumek Turbay. Dau has been a clownish ineffective mayor who has spent four years picking fights and insulting politicians, without accomplishing much in terms of infrastructure projects in a city plagued by years of misgovernment, political instability (seven mayors in ten years) and corruption. Dumek Turbay is playing on his experience and ability to build big projects, and while he has the endorsements of centrist parties with a good image (Nuevo Liberalismo, En Marcha etc.), he has gotten much of the political clans behind him, including the Blel clan (led by parapolítico Vicente Blel) and reconciling with his cousin, powerful Liberal senator Lidio García Turbay. Dau has implicitly campaigned against him, even though office holders can't participate in partisan electoral politics. Dumek's main rivals are William García Tirado, a veteran old councillor who finished second in 2019 (having had most of the political clans behind him) and now rejects any support from political clans, running a populist campaign; Judith 'La Mariamulata' Pinedo, a former mayor (2008-11) whose 2007 victory was the first major upset to the power of the clans, and who was then unjustly persecuted, wrongfully convicted and imprisoned (until her acquittal in March 2023), now back as the 'alternative' candidate but suffering from the perception that she's Dau's candidate; and the Pacto's candidate Javier Julio Bejarano, an anti-Dau opposition councillor and now aggressively campaigning against Dumek for being corrupt.

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GOVERNOR

Antioquia: The man to beat is former governor (2016-2019) Luis Pérez, in a close race in which, out of a divided anti-petrista right, the right's strongest candidate is uribista Andrés Julián Rendón, former CD mayor of Rionegro. Pérez is a controversial traditional politician who has been in politics for over 30 years and has a remarkable ability to remain politically relevant, often out of sheer opportunism (from uribista in the 2000s and santista in the 2010s he supported Quintero in 2019 and Petro in 2022). Like other Colombian ideology-free politicians, his selling point is building big projects (or, at least, pretending to build things so that he can inaugurate a plaque with his name on it) and his slogan is 'think big', and like other Colombian ideology-free politicians, he comes with a lot of baggage and skeletons (literally so in the last case given Operation Orion). Pérez's campaign is endorsed by the centrist ASI (which will give endorsements to anyone if they pay $$ ask nicely) and much of local CR, and finished off strongly with an alliance with sketchy former Liberal senator Julián Bedoya (whose gubernatorial candidacy for a new small party, after César Gaviria denied him the Liberal nomination, never went anywhere), who brings with him petrista Conservative senator Carlos Andrés Trujillo's machine. Pérez is attacked by the right for having backed Quintero and Petro, and Pérez has now distanced himself from Petro and criticized him for his alleged 'hostility' towards Antioquia (a smart strategy in right-wing Antioquia), and says he's neither far-right nor far-left but ‘progressive’. Against him the right is divided between three candidates (down from five): the strongest is Andrés Julián Rendón, whose asset is now Fico's endorsement (as well as the support of two Liberal factions). The two others are Luis Fernando Suárez, the candidate of outgoing Liberal governor Aníbal Gaviria, who received the last-minute support of Conservative candidate, former senator Juan Diego Gómez, which really set off Rendón; and Mauricio Tobón (who looks like Jean-Marie Le Pen did in 1974), a shapeshifting politician now running as a Trump-imitating (he used the slogan 'Make Antioquia Great Again') right-wing 'federalist' with the slogan Antioquia Federal (a quasi-meme political marketing ploy that is popular among Antioquian regionalist right-wingers who hate Petro). The quinterista-petrista candidate is Esteban Restrepo, who was Quintero's secretary of government, who has concentrated in attacking Luis Pérez, an ally-turned-rival of quinterismo. The race is competitive and polls have been inconsistent and of dubious quality, with both Pérez and Rendón having a solid chance.

Valle: Former governor Dilian Francisca Toro is the clear favourite to win a second term as governor, particularly as her main rival, Tulio Gómez, has been declared ineligible and was forced to tell his supporters to cast blank votes at the very last minute. Toro, former national leader of the Partido de la U, leads one of the most powerful political clans in Colombia—with five seats in Congress, the governorship since 2016, a dozen mayors and many councillors and deputies. Her candidacy is co-endorsed by six other parties, including the Liberals and Conservatives. Despite her strong machine, Toro is not hegemonic and her image has suffered from the wear and tear of power and several scandals and accusations (which have never gone anywhere in courts). The only candidate who could have given her a run for her money was Tulio Gómez (businessman and the main shareholder of the América de Cali football club), who built a catch-all anti-Dilian coalition (including both the Greens and parts of right-wing CR), but in late September, the CNE revoked his candidacy, ruling that he was ineligible for having signed a contract with the city of Cali less than a year before the election. Despite ever-dwindling chances of salvaging his candidacy, he challenged the decision until finally, on October 26, the Council of State dealt the final blow, confirming his ineligibility. Only then did he call on his supporters to cast a blank vote—recognized as valid votes, if the blank vote were to win, the election would have to be repeated (this has never happened in a gubernatorial race). The minor other candidates didn't like this and have criticized him for this: Ferney Lozano (Pacto), Santiago Castro (CD-MSN), Óscar Gamboa (Dignidad y Compromiso).

Atlántico: A much more competitive election than Barranquilla, a rematch of 2015 between charista Liberal Eduardo Verano (who won in 2015) and catch-all opponent Alfredo Varela. Verano is a veteran Liberal politician and former two-term governor (2008-2011, 2016-2019) who, although not formally part of the Char machine, is functional to their interests and now electorally depends on them. Verano received the support of charista patriarch 'Don Fuad' Char and has the support of most of the department's leading politicians and machines (Cepeda, Name, Ashton, Torres, Mauricio Gómez etc.). In 2015, Verano won by just 6,800 votes against Alfredo Varela, a former reality TV show winner and two-term CR councillor in Barranquilla. Varela is this year a catch-all opponent of charista hegemony, with support from smaller machines (like corrupt former senator Eduardo Pulgar), the endorsements of the Greens and En Marcha, and the support of much of the Pacto, otably Pacto rep. Agmeth Escaf (his son’s godfather), although Varela has tried to distance himself from the Pacto. Dissident petristas are supporting Claudia Verónica Patiño, the wife of Nicolás Petro's associate and intermediary Máximo Noriega.

Santander: From an election that was supposed to be Rodolfo Hernández's to lose, it's now likely to be won by a retired army general, Juvenal Díaz Mateus. Rodolfo's candidacy has been slowly killed off by ill-feelings on the right from his 2022 runoff defeat, his subsequent failure to be a strong opponent to Petro, his subsequent resignation of his ex officio Senate seat which he never cared about, a colon cancer diagnosis that has kept him from campaigning much and finally the CNE's revocation of his candidacy for ineligiblity because of three disciplinary sanctions by the Procuraduría. Rodolfo hasn't given up and his name is still on the ballot, and his votes will be counted, but he remains ineligible nonetheless, and Rodolfo has taken the matter to the IACHR and claims that the CNE tried to extort him in exchange for not revoking his candidacy. All this mess has helped retired Maj. Gen. Juvenal Díaz Mateus, who was forced to retire by Petro last year after 35 years in active service. General Juvenal, as he's known, sells himself as a conservative anti-Petro ‘outsider’ and has called Rodolfo a ‘traitor' for ‘betraying’ his voters after the 2022 election. Though he's never held office (or been allowed to vote for 35 years), he comes from a political family: he's the brother of former Conservative senator Iván Díaz Mateus (convicted for bribing a congresswoman to vote for Uribe's reelection in 2004, the Yidispolítica scandal) and the family clan controls the Conservative Party in Santander with his brother, Luis Eduardo Díaz Mateus, as representative since 2022. He is supported by the Liberals, Conservatives, CR, MSN and uribismo. The other strong candidate with machine support is Héctor Mantilla, the former mayor of Floridablanca (2016-19), who is supported by the Aguilar clan. The Green 'alternative' candidate who finished strong in polls is 'Profe' Ferley Sierra, a departmental deputy since 2019 famous for his viral sensationalist social media videos and posts denouncing corruption and political rivals.

Cundinamarca: In Cundinamarca, the department which surrounds Bogotá, the election is a repeat of 2015 in terms of both the leading candidates (Jorge Rey and Nancy Patrica Gutiérrez) and the prohibitive favourite (Jorge Rey). Rey, the former governor, has become the leading political boss of Cundinamarca since 2015. He has a massive coalition of 13 parties supporting him. His main rival will be, as in 2015, uribismo's Nancy Patricia Gutiérrez, a former congresswoman and later Duque's interior minister (2018-20), demoted to presidential advisor for human rights in 2020 for her bad job as interior minister. Not all of uribismo is fully behind her, a significant faction is with Rey.