The Government’s Ambivalent Response to Protests in Colombia

The important protests of last Sunday, April 21, caught the government in Colombia off guard. Despite the manifestations of “listening with respect” to the political message launched by the Minister of the Interior, Luis Fernando Velasco, President Gustavo Petro insisted that behind the mobilizations are those who want to stop the program of social reforms promoted by his administration.

Laura Sarabia, current director of the presidential office and right hand of the president, stated the need to “face the protests with reflection and self-criticism”. In line with what Minister Velasco expressed, Sarabia delivered a more conciliatory message to the country.

However, to date, there has been no clear and united communiqué from the government in the face of the widespread and peaceful social protests, which showed the rejection of an important part of the population’s policies, just a year and a half after its constitution.

President Gustavo Petro’s reaction

The expected reaction of President Gustavo Petro left no one indifferent. In a long message on his Facebook social network, the head of state estimated the mobilized people in the whole country to number about 250,000, concentrated mostly in Bogota, Medellin, and Bucaramanga, and “weak” in the rest of the cities, he said.

For Petro “some sectors of the mobilized people want a pact that undoes the Reforms that go in favor of the people, to maintain the capture of huge amounts of public money used as private profits”. According to the president, the protests against the government’s objective of consolidating the middle classes were orchestrated by “those who believe they are owners of public money,” a rejection of his work of government that “is dressed through the networks and the media of seduction mechanisms centered on hate and lies.”

The president affirmed in his message that he was rejected because of his “popular origin,” generating a “hatred” that would not be good if it returned to the country because it would kill many people, perhaps worse than it did in the past,” concerning the paramilitary massacres in not-so-distant times.

Finally, Gustavo Petro called his followers to “respond” in the mobilizations of May 1st, Workers’ Day, denying that this was an attempt to divide the country. On the contrary, the president said that “in the face of the different voices, the Government will seek ways of understanding”, but assured that the right-wing questions the result of the 2022 elections, in which he was elected as the first leftist president of Colombia.

“The fate of the Government will depend exclusively on the support of the people”, concluded the head of state, in a message that promised to fuel his differences with those opposed to his reformist policies.

Velasco and Sarabia, more conciliatory

On the other hand, prominent government officials were more conciliatory, although without breaking with the line that defends the legitimacy of the social reforms that the Executive is championing. “There is a political message and it has to be listened to with respect; to pass over that message would be clumsy”, stated the Minister of the Interior in conversation with the press. “In democracy, dialogue is not always to agree, in democracy to dialogue is to propose models, to listen and, with the word of the other, to improve one’s proposal”, added the minister.

Velasco announced that, taking advantage of a council of ministers already scheduled to discuss the 2025 budget, the full government will reflect on the protests. The minister announced that “very surely” this act would be in Boyaca, where next weekend the demands expressed in the streets of the country will be studied calmly.

For her part, Laura Sarabia recognized the importance of the protests, from the president’s office. “Today we must have the greatness to recognize that many people mobilized, that they did so with all the guarantees and were able to express their discontent,” she wrote on her social networks.

Sarabia, one of President Petro’s most trusted people, added that “this is a week that, as a government, we must face in reflection and self-criticism”, a stance that makes her, together with the Minister of the Interior, one of those most receptive to the anti-government protests that were heard in the streets of Colombia.

The difficult balance between firmness and dialogue

Given this disparity of reactions, official sources consulted by Colombia One in the Presidency referred to what was expressed by the head of State, although they qualified that the government “will reflect on the demands, just as the Minister of the Interior said”, without going into further considerations.

On the other hand, the political opposition, which is taking advantage of the massive protest for its political benefit, wanted to downplay the conciliatory statements of Sarabia and Velasco, pointing out that “who is in charge is Gustavo Petro”, in the words of conservative senator Miguel Uribe Turbay.

A few months before the halfway point of his term of office as the first leftist president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro faces the challenge of finding the difficult balance between firmness and legitimacy in his reformist political proposals, and conciliation with the conservative opposition. This is especially so since, despite his victory in the 2022 presidential elections, the political forces that support him in the legislative chambers are not enough to approve, without negotiating, his government’s proposals.

It is therefore necessary to debate and compromise with political forces that can help achieve a majority of votes, as happened in the recent approval of the new Pension Law.