Tag Archives: petro

Three reasons why Petro’s removal as Bogotá mayor could harm Santos

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In a decision that could widely affect the May presidential election, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos has confirmed the previous decision of Colombian inspector-general Alejandro Ordóñez to remove Gustavo Petro, a leftist and former M-19 rebel leader, as Bogotá’s mayor.Colombia Flag Icon

Ordóñez, a staunchly right-wing conservative close to former president Álvaro Uribe, ordered Petro’s removal last December on the questionable basis of Petro’s actions during a garbage collection strike in December 2012. Ordóñez claimed that Petro’s threat to replace public workers with private garbage collectors amounted to abuse of office. In addition to Petro’s removal, Ordóñez also banned Petro from holding public office for 15 years.

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RELATED: Uribe returns to Colombian political life as senator

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Petro, who was facing an April 6 recall election in any event, appealed Ordóñez’s decision, but the Colombian Council of State refused to overturn it. Santos affirmed Petro’s removal today, naming labor minister Rafael Pardo as Bogotá’s interim mayor, despite an order from the Inter-American Human Rights Commission upholding Petro’s right to remain mayor. Accordingly, Santos’s decision could potentially endanger Colombia’s seat within the Organization of American States.

Presumably, Bogotá residents will go to the polls later this spring or summer to choose Petro’s permanent replacement.

In the meanwhile, Santos’s decision leaves him vulnerable on at least three fronts as the May 25 presidential election approaches. Santos appears increasingly likely to face a June 15 presidential runoff, against either former Bogotá mayor Enrique Peñalosa or former finance minister and Uribe ally Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, the candidate of Uribe’s newly formed politics vehicle, Centro Democrático (Democratic Center). Continue reading Three reasons why Petro’s removal as Bogotá mayor could harm Santos

Uribe returns to Colombian political life as senator

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The big headline from Sunday’s congressional elections in Colombia is the return of the powerful conservative former president, Álvaro Uribe, who won election to the Colombian Senado (Senate).Colombia Flag Icon

But the bigger story is more complicated — and the truth is that each of the two major camps in Colombian politics has something to be happy about from the weekend’s elections, which were conducted in the shadow of two important upcoming elections — a recall election involving Gustavo Petro, the leftist mayor of Bogotá on April 6 and a presidential election on May 15 (with a potential runoff to follow later in the summer).

Uribe (pictured above) has carved out a space where he now leads the main opposition to Colombia’s president Juan Manuel Santos, demonstrating his enduring popularity and his determination to play a role in Colombian governance, despite his ineligibility to run for the presidency in the future.  It will make Colombia’s congress a much livelier place, to say the least, and it will require Santos (or his successor) to work hard to maintain a working majority in the Colombian congress, and especially in the Senado.

Santos, however, should be delighted that his coalition suffered only marginal losses to Uribe’s forces.  Despite Uribe’s gains on Sunday, Santos remains the heavy frontrunner in the upcoming May 15 presidential election.  That’s in part because Uribe himself is barred from reelection, so Uribe’s new party is supporting former finance minister, Óscar Iván Zuluaga, who has far less popularity and charisma than either Uribe or Santos.

You can think of Colombia politics today as a competition between two major blocs — a centrist/center-right coalition that supports Santos and a more conservative bloc that supports Uribe.  In addition, there’s a minor bloc of leftist parties that today find themselves largely outside the mainstream of Colombian politics, with the exception of the Colombian capital, Bogotá.

Uribe formed CDlogothe Centro Democrático (Democratic Center) last year, and he ran on the slogan of ‘mano firme, corazón grande,’ or ‘firm hand, big heart,’ campaigning in opposition to Santos’s high-profile push to negotiate a lasting peace settlement with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).  While Uribe should be happy with the results of the senatorial elections, it’s clear that the ‘Uribe bloc’ is still far smaller than the ‘Santos bloc,’ which includes three major parties:

  • The Partido Liberal Colombiano (Colombian Liberal Party), once Colombia’s largest center-left party, has converged with the other parties in the Santos-led coalition, pulling it ever closer to the center-right in recent years.  The party split over whether to support Uribe, who began his political career in the Liberal Party.  Though it fielded separate presidential candidates in both 2006 and in 2010, it will support Santos in 2014.
  • The Partido Social de Unidad Nacional (Social Party of National Unity, ‘Party of the U’) is a conservative party formed in 2005 by Liberal uribistas, and the ‘U’ once stood as much for Uribe as for ‘unidad.’  It became Colombia’s largest party in the Uribe era, and it now forms the backbone of Santos’s coalition.
  • Cambio Radical (Radical Change), founded in 1998, became increasingly important over the course of the 2000s, and it formed part of Uribe’s presidential majority in the 2000s, just as it today forms part of Santos’s presidential majority.  Like the Party of the ‘U’ and the Liberal Party, it will support Santos in the upcoming presidntial election.

The major swing vote between the two blocs is the Partido Conservador Colombiano (Colombian Conservative Party).  Like the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party dates back to the 1840s, and it was once Colombia’s chief center-right party.  It’s currently part of Santos’s coalition, but it’s the weakest link among the four parties that have backed Santos since 2010, and it’s the likeliest source of future support for Uribe.  Though it supported Uribe in 2002 and 2006 and Santos in 2010, it is fielding its own presidential candidate in 2014, Marta Lucía Ramírez, a former senator and defense minister between 2002 and 2003.  That hurts Santos by depriving him of the Conservative brand (though only a few Conservative lawmakers have actually endorsed Ramírez), but it also hurts Uribe and Zuluaga by dividing the conservative opposition to Santos.

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Uribe guided Colombia’s transition from a country paralyzed by drug-related violence into a more secure, economically vibrant regional leader between 2002 and 2010, backed by the military and economic aid of the US government.  Despite efforts to run for a third term, Uribe bowed out of the presidency in support of Santos, his defense minister.  Santos (pictured above) easily won election in June 2010, king nearly 70% of the vote in a runoff against Bogotá mayor Antanas Mockus, the candidate of the Partido Verde Colombiano (Colombian Green Party).

Almost immediately, however, Uribe started criticizing Santos, and Uribe irrevocably broke with his one-time protégé when Santos directed the Colombian government to enter into negotiations with FARC, a leftist guerrilla group that has waged an insurgency against Colombia for the better part of the last half-century.   Continue reading Uribe returns to Colombian political life as senator

14 in 2014: Colombia presidential election

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7. Colombia presidential election, May 15 (with potential June runoff).Colombia Flag Icon

If Colombians went to the polls today, it’s likely they would reelect Juan Manuel Santos, a former defense secretary who came to power in 2010 as the protégé of former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe.

But five months is a long time, especially given that Santos (pictured above) is engaged in high-stakes talks with the longtime guerrilla organization Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), which has waged an insurgency against the Colombian government for nearly half a century.  Under the conservative Uribe, Colombia firmly emerged from an era of narcoterrorism and cartel-fueled violence that made the country the top battleground in the US war on drugs throughout the 1990s. Colombia today is enjoying rapid economic growth.

Uribe turned on Santos shortly after his election, and Uribe is staunchly opposed to the Colombian government’s talks with FARC, which kicked off in October 2012.  Instead, Uribe is supporting former finance minister Óscar Iván Zuluaga and has formed a new political party, Uribe Centro Democrático (Democratic Center), to challenge Santos.

Santos’s approval rating dropped to 25% in mid-2013, and while it’s slowly recovering ground, he shouldn’t necessarily take reelection for granted.  Polls, however, show that Colombians want to stick with Santos — and may resent what they see as Uribe’s attempt to claw his way back into influence over national policy.  On the left, none of the three most likely candidates seem to be able to attract enough support to win the presidency, though former Bogotá mayor Enrique Peñalosa might pose the strongest challenge as a business-friendly member of the Partido Verde Colombiano (Colombian Green Party).

One issue that could motivate the Colombian left is the removal of Bogotá mayor and former M-19 rebel Gustavo Petro in December 2013 by Colombia’s inspector general Alejandro Ordóñez, a Uribe ally — ostensibly over the issue of a 2011 clash between Petro and the city’s garbage collectors.  With Petro and his allies still protesting the decision, the capital city faces fresh elections as well early in 2014 that could highlight the deficiencies and growing pains of Colombian democracy.

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Colombia’s inspector-general summarily removes Bogotá’s left-wing mayor

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As Colombia prepares to vote in parliamentary and presidential elections in the first half of 2014, the mayor of Colombia’s capital city of Bogotá, former M-19 rebel Gustavo Petro, was removed from office yesterday in a government action that could have wide-ranging implications for Colombian politics, including the ongoing peace negotiations between the administration of president Juan Manuel Santos and FARC, the leftist guerrilla group.Colombia Flag Icon

Colombia’s inspector general Alejandro Ordóñez, an ally of conservative former president Álvaro Uribe, ordered Petro’s removal on the basis of abuse of office in respect of a showdown with Bogotá’s garbage collectors last year.  Ordóñez ruled that Petro (pictured above) violated constitutional principles by attempting to replace private contractors in December 2012 with a city-run force — garbage piled up in the streets for three days, but the contractors ultimately returned to work.  Ordóñez’s ruling claims that Petro’s actions during the showdown were unconstitutional and that, in addition to Petro’s removal from office, Petro should also be banished from Colombian politics for 15 years. The United Nations representative in Colombia has called for a meeting to discuss Petro’s removal, expressing concern for the potential violation of the rights of Bogotá citizens who elected Petro mayor two years ago.

It’s all caused somewhat of a controversy in Bogotá, given that the mayoral position is the second-most important elected position after the Colombia presidency.  Petro and his leftist supporters have taken to the streets in protest, aghast at what they believe is a politically motivated decision by a right-wing official.  Ordóñez last year removed Piedad Cordoba, a leftist politician with ties to former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, from Colombia’s Senado (Senate), banning her from public office for 18 years.

Petro’s ‘destitución‘ could affect both the ongoing negotiations in Havana between the Colombian government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), as well as the upcoming May 2014 presidential election.  His removal could discourage FARC leaders from agreeing to a final political settlement if they believe that Ordoñez and Colombia’s political elite are willing to revoke the results of a free election and remove a former guerrilla leader from a position of political power.  Petro, even if banned from holding public office himself, could also find himself with more free time to help mobilize a united leftist alternative to Santos.

Petro won the Bogotá mayoral election in October 2011 in a marquee race — Petro took 32.2% of the vote, narrowly defeating Enrique Peñalosa, a member of the Partido Verde Colombiano (Colombian Green Party) who previously served as mayor from 1998 to 2001 and who won 24.9%.  Former Colombian senator Gina Parody, with the support of another former mayor, Antanas Mockus, won 16.7%. Mockus, a bearded and bespectacled Colombian of Lithuanian descent, who briefly launched his own campaign for mayor in 2011 after resigning from the Green Party, is perhaps most well-known as the Green Party nominee for president in 2010, though he lost the runoff to Santos by a wide margin.

Though Petro has appealed the decision, Ordóñez’s office will hear the appeal, so it’s unlikely that Petro can legally reverse the decision.  His removal comes after Samuel Moreno, Bogotá’s mayor between 2008 and 2011, was removed from office in relation to improprieties in city contract appropriations, and he remains in prison pending trial for corruption — after coming to office with the lofty promise of building a subway system for Bogotá, Moreno quickly began handing out contracts to his friends and associates.  Petro’s misdeeds, by contrast, seem relatively less serious.  Though if the removal holds, Santos will be entitled to appoint an interim mayor until new elections will be held early next year.

Petro’s tenure as mayor has been relatively rocky — a protest group had already collected enough signatures to force a recall vote, and Petro’s popularity has plummeted since he took office in January 2012.  Continue reading Colombia’s inspector-general summarily removes Bogotá’s left-wing mayor