The seven events that occurred during the week that will mark a before and after in the government of Gustavo Petro

This week, various analysts have indicated in the past few hours, may be the most complex week that the administration of Gustavo Petrosince taking office on August 7, 2022. A few days after spending seven months at the head of the National Government, several events have struck the Executive.

A few typical episodes of government action, such as a periodic and routine favourability survey, were followed by other more complex chapters, such as the way in which the government assumed the kidnapping of nearly 80 police officers in rural areas. Caquetá area, and which will end with a possible motion of censure in the Minister of National Defense, Ivan Velazquez in the legislative body.

And the week ended with the bomb that exploded the ex-wife of the president’s son, Nicolás Petro, Day Vásquez, who in an interview with Publications Weeksaid her ex-husband received money from Santander Lopesierra, ‘malboro man‘, and of Alphonse ‘The Turkish Hilsaca‘, both with previous processes with justice.

GlobeLiveMedia analyzed, day by day, hand in hand with the representative in the House of the Democratic Center, Andrés Forero, the main episodes of the week. Was this a turning point for this government? We will have to wait.

In a presidential address from the Casa de Nariño, the President announced the departure of three members of his ministerial cabinet: the Minister of Education, Alexandre Gaviria; the sports minister, Marie-Isabelle Urrutiaand the Minister of Culture, Patricia Arizawho were not present at the scene.

The president invited the three outgoing ministers to “help us build this social pact from wherever they are” and announced the new replacements.

“I believe it was a week of inflection for the Petro government which began with the leak of a devastating text against the health reform of Caroline Liege, and the president, instead of looking for the political center, what we see is that he tends to become radicalized and that is why he is removing one of his political pillars from the center, which is Alejandro Gaviria , and leaves Minister Corcho, questioned by users, doctors and academics. This is how the week started,” began representative Andrés Forero, telling GlobeLiveMedia.

For the first time since the beginning of his presidential mandate, according to the results of the ballot of to invade (whose base is 1,200 respondents and its margin of error is 2.83%), Gustavo Petro’s disapproval was greater than his approval, with a reduction of 8 percentage points, positioning himself at 40% in favor and 51% disfavour.

“It takes away a margin of maneuver in the Colombian Congress and I think this was added to the fact that when he took out the ministers, in my opinion in a miscalculation, he previously met the political parties of the coalition and in front of public opinion he remained as if he was distribute these ministries for them to approve health reform, which is very confusing. That’s how it was seen,” read the Forero representative for this outlet.

Shortly after Cambio Radical, the party of the former presidential candidate German Vargas Llerastable a health counter-reform proposal to the document presented by the Petro government, the parties liberal, conservative there by La U They announced that they would present a document with new proposals for the initiative, which shows a lack of political consensus on this issue.

This split in the government’s political bloc, Rep. Forero warned, will show up in further reforms. “In an attempt to filter out the crisis around health reform, they leaked a document which, apparently, is a draft of the labor reform, and contrary to covering up the health issue what he has done is sound the alarms and businessmen are saying that if he is approved unfortunately job creation will decline and informality will increase”, added to this fact the representative of the opposition.

After 40 days of demonstrations in the rural area of San Vicente del CaguanIn the wellsa group of peasants took over the facilities of the oil company Emerald Energy. This was in retaliation for the abandonment of the state to which they have historically been subjected, as well as the environmental effects of the oil company and the destruction of roads in the area due to transit tank trucks.

Instead of setting the company’s headquarters on fire, as was the original plan, the peasants kidnapped 6 employees, 78 policemen (including Esmad agents) and even the town mediator who had come to try to mediate.

This confrontation left two dead: the sub-intendant Ricardo Monroy, and one of the peasants identified as Reinel Arévalo. After the death of the man in uniform, President Gustavo Petro took action on the matter:

“Right now a commission from the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Interior and Military Forces is leaving to deal with the situation of Pozos in San Vicente del Caguan. I have ordered the cessation of acts of violence,” the president said via his Twitter account. It was the reaction time to a situation that was remarkably escalating that called for criticism of the government’s ability to maneuver in matters of public order:

“This episode showed that the government has very little operational capacity. They knew that there had been problems for several days and the Minister and the Deputy Minister of the Interior had said that everything was settled and we saw that it was not. What we see is that this government lets the problems grow and, once they get bigger, they don’t really know what to do. This outrages you and I agree with the words of some of the uniformed officers who were victims of the kidnapping and who said that it seems that for this government they have no human rights,” added Forero’s representative at GlobeLiveMedia.

He concluded that what happened in Pozos left Colombians with horrible images, “with a situation of humiliation for our public force really great. This episode showed how every principle of authority has been lost. It is incredible that the ministers did not go immediately to Caquetá, but set up a unified command post from the comfort of facilities Minister of the Interior in the city of Bogotá,” said the Forero representative.

That day, the Council of State suspended the decree empowering the executive to regulate public services. The High Court, as an emergency precautionary measure, decided to quash it, while carrying out an analysis to see if the issuance of it violated the law or the constitution.

It should be borne in mind that with the decree of February 227, 2023, by which some of the presidential functions of a regulatory nature in matters of internal public services are resumed and other provisions are promulgated, the president has begun to assume the functions of the Drinking Water and Basic Sanitation Regulatory Commission (CRA) and the Energy and Gas Regulatory Commission (CREG), which would enable it to set public service tariffs.

Here is the presidential response of Saturday, March 4:

“This decision of the Council of State is a very hard blow for the executive because it put an end to the pretensions that the president had to make policy on energy tariffs”, specified in this regard the representative of Forero .

In an unprecedented decision for the full room of the Constitutional Court, in its three decades of history, this body has determined that this High Court can suspend laws if necessary, if they are found to be unconstitutional, and on an exceptional basis. It should be mentioned that this decision was supported by the whole room.

“The foregoing is based on the need to guarantee the effectiveness of the principle of constitutional supremacy, with which, by virtue of a reinterpretation of the powers of the Court to fulfill its functions as guardian of the supremacy of the Constitution, the precedent is adjusted, “says an excerpt from the statement to public opinion issued by the High Court that day. This decision was made under the magnifying glass of total peace.

And finally on Friday, the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation officially announced that it had opened an investigation against the deputy of the department of Atlántico, Nicolas Petroshortly after his ex-wife, Days Vásquez, accused him of receiving illegal money for the 2022 presidential campaign.

More specifically, he specified Publications Week Vasquez DaysNicolás Petro allegedly received money from Santander Lopesierra, ‘El hombre Malboro’, and Alfonso ‘El Turco Hilsaca’, both formerly prosecuted by Colombian justice.

The prosecutor’s office also opened an investigation into the president’s son, a day after the president requested it through a public opinion statement.

“It was the biggest bombshell of the week. His son and his brother halted two elephants in the Casa de Nariño and it’s hard to believe the president didn’t know about it. What we do know, c is that he knew what was linked to his son since February 1 and it was only until Thursday that he decided to make this statement,” Forero said.

And he concluded by saying that “the The historical Pact is a victim the way he judged other politicians in the past, where he always implied that if something was campaign related, his boss had to know what was going on. It does not suit the Pact to say that President Iván Duque knew what his campaign manager was doing, but President Petro did not know what his brother and son were doing,” the Democratic Center representative concluded to GlobeLiveMedia.