This Tuesday, massive marches were organized in several Colombian cities in favor of President Gustavo Petro while he is celebrating 100 days at the head of the country. The Colombian president, the first from the left in the country’s history, reopened the borders with Venezuela, took steps towards his total peace project and managed to pass the tax reform bill. However, he has to manage an economic situation that worries the population.
This Tuesday, several marches promoted by the Government were organized in Bogotá, Cali, Bucaramanga or Medellín to celebrate Gustavo Petro’s 100 days as president of Colombia and support his government, although they were smaller than expected.
Gustavo Petro was elected with 50.44% of the votes with a program based on a drastic change both in terms of security and peace, as well as in an economic, social or environmental level. In a divided country and although his proposals are criticized by the opposition, he has managed to have a majority in Congress that allowed him to pass several specific bills.
tax reform
The Colombian Congress approved a few days ago the controversial tax reform bill that will allow the collection of 20 trillion pesos a year, the equivalent of 4,000 million dollars in the next four years. The speed with which the president managed to get such a project out of Congress was welcomed and proves the government’s governability.
The reform is based on the increase in taxes on oil and coal, as well as on people who earn more than 10 million pesos per month. Single-use plastics, sugary drinks and ultra-processed foods will also be taxed.
“Congress approved a historic law whose purpose is to help reduce a huge social debt. It is a tool that will help eradicate hunger, reduce poverty and inequality, as well as the privileges of a few and advance in the face of inequality,” said the Minister of Finance, José Antonio Ocampo after signing the project.
The Government also created a subsidy to help mothers who are heads of household in a situation of economic vulnerability. On Tuesday, November 8, the president announced that they will receive 500,000 pesos a month.
However, the Government was unable to collect the $5.2 billion originally planned from the tax reform. Some proposals, such as the tax on higher pensions, could not be integrated into the project. The opposition also criticized the project, former President Álvaro Uribe, leader of the Democratic Center party, said on his Twitter account that the reforms could “reduce investment, affect growth, employment and revenue.”
Towards “global peace”
Achieving “global peace” was one of the fundamental and most challenging promises of Gustavo Petro’s political campaign for the presidency, with the objective of the peaceful dismantling of crime. In his first three months in office, the president managed to take a few steps in this direction.
The biggest obstacle was finding a legal way to resume dialogue with FARC dissidents and other military groups. The House of Representatives approved the “global peace” bill on October 26 after arduous debates. It allows the Government to dialogue with all the armed groups that operate in the country, and especially with the National Liberation Army (ELN), something that had been suspended since 2019.
This law sent a message to all the guerrilla groups in the country stating that the government is open to sitting down with them to talk.
The president also suspended extradition for ELN negotiators. The government said in August that it would stop extraditing to the United States drug traffickers who agree to negotiate with the state and do not reoffend, something that was poorly received by the United States.
Gustavo Petro said that “the war on drugs has been a complete failure” and introduced a bill to legalize the recreational use of marijuana.
Although these steps towards “global peace” are important, several Colombian experts consider that this peace could not be achieved under Petro’s mandate since the armed groups that remain active in the country are too many and too divided.
Normalization of relations with Venezuela
Another promise of Petro’s political campaign was the resumption of diplomatic relations with the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro, broken since February 2019, after the former president of Colombia, Iván Duque, recognized the legitimacy of Juan Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela instead of Nicolás Maduro.
In September, the common land border, closed since August 2015, reopened and flights between the two countries resumed. Petro and Maduro also met on November 1 and ambassadors Armando Benedetti and Félix Plasencia arrived in Caracas and Bogotá, respectively.
The normalization of relations with Venezuela will also contribute, according to the Petro government, to the “global peace” project, since the Colombian president asked Maduro to be a “guarantor” of the dialogues with the ELN.
Gustavo Petro wants to be the protagonist of the return of Nicolás Maduro on the international scene. He was one of the subjects of his meeting in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron on November 10. After this meeting, Macron met Maduro at COP27 and reaffirmed the need to find a solution to the Venezuelan situation.
Finally, Petro asked Maduro to reintegrate into the inter-American human rights system that he abandoned in 2013, an idea that the Venezuelan president said he was considering.
Leading the Latin American fight against the climate crisis
Climate change has been at the center of the public discourse of Gustavo Petro, who made notable interventions at the United Nations and at COP27 on this topic.
One of his most important announcements at COP27 was that Colombia would invest 200 million dollars a year for 20 years to protect the Amazon region. Petro also called on the IMF to “initiate the debt-for-investment program in climate change adaptation and mitigation in all developing countries of the world.”
However, many also denounce that the government’s public interventions on environmental policies reflect a disorder in the official position on the matter.
Gustavo Petro announced that Colombia would stop emitting CO2, and that it will have to “separate itself from oil and coal in a short time”, which generated many divisions in the country.
Economic difficulties
Colombia is facing strong economic problems that worry the population, a situation created by the nervousness of the markets in the face of the tax reform, but also by the international context of high inflation in the midst of the war in Ukraine.
According to recent surveys, 37.7% of Colombians say that the economy is the main problem to be solved, well above corruption or insecurity.
Inflation up to October has been 12.2%, the highest in the century, in addition, the peso has been greatly devalued against the dollar until reaching an exchange rate of 5,000 pesos, although it has partially recovered.
The government tried to calm the markets in October. José Ocampo said in October that the Government would carry out “a responsible macroeconomic policy”, comply with “the Fiscal Rule”, “diversify exports” and not impose “exchange controls”.
Finally, the president himself said, “we have a recession in sight”, which worries Colombians in the face of the year 2023 and could impact their popularity and reduce their governability.
With EFE and local media
