Petro pursued ‘total peace’ but it eluded him

Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftwing president, promised reform after decades of violence and inequality. Will his successor, to be sworn in this August, continue his programme or seek to reverse it?

Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftwing president, was sworn in on 7 August 2022. At his inauguration he asked to be brought the sword of Simón Bolívar, hero of several Latin American independence struggles, and told the crowd, ‘This is the sword of the people – that’s why we wanted it here, in this moment and in this place.’

Colombia’s deeply unjust political and economic model has long needed reform, after six decades of internal conflict resulting in over 450,000 deaths, years of far-right policies under Álvaro Uribe (2002-10) and Iván Duque (2018-22), and huge protests in 2021. But Petro, who served as congressman, senator and mayor of Bogotá, poured cold water on what he saw as excessive enthusiasm for radical change. ‘We are going to develop capitalism in Colombia,’ he said. ‘Not because we love it, but because we must first overcome premodernity, feudalism and modern slavery.’

The question was how and with whom Petro would govern. He won with just 50.4% of the vote, and his coalition, the Historic Pact, gained just 17.35% of the vote in the legislative election. Winning 24 (out of 182) seats in the Chamber of Representatives and 26 (out of 108) in the Senate represented a historic victory for the left, but it remained too weak to push policies through.

In Colombia defeated parties often work with winners, albeit cynically. As a result, Petro found himself with a comfortable majority that included part of the right (the Liberal Party, Union Party for the People and Conservative Party) and the centrists of the Green Alliance. Petro knew his new friends wanted to join his government to ‘moderate and scale back’ reforms. But he was sure that this would be counterbalanced by another force: ‘the young men and women who have decided to demand more reforms and greater depth in those reforms. The government will be caught between these two forces, and perhaps we’ll find a happy medium’.

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