After two and a half years, those hopes for a better life turn into frustration and popular rebellion.
He has been reiterative in his speeches, that he is not leftist or socialist, but that his government came to modernize capitalism in Colombia, but in our country the same economic structure is maintained, where speculative capital, landowners and servility to transnational capital predominate. The extractivist model and only taxing the middle class, increasing the price of fuel and public services, is aggravated. The tax reforms of Petrismo have ended up in more of the same: less taxes for capital and more taxes for the middle and popular classes. In this government, the neoliberal model is deepened.
The government of change started by giving bureaucratic quotas to the different traditional parties, to guarantee their governance. However, it was not enough for the rancid oligarchy accustomed to having everything, which is why they have dedicated themselves to airing in the press the corruption scandals that compromise Petro, his family or his close circle of government. In addition, the government crisis worsens, since the renegotiation of positions is permanent, which prevents a stable cabinet and effective and honest officials. The bureaucratic rise of characters who are completely questioned and discredited, put an end to the president’s little administrative credibility.
Petro could have promoted the package of legislative reforms with the people mobilized in the streets, but he preferred compromises and shenanigans with the old politicking, granting jams, bribes and taking away the substance that favored the people, to put in what interests big capital. Some facts of this new corruption are already coming out to public opinion, where the officials of the government of change, steal even the resources of the victims of the great natural disasters. Petrista’s remedy against corruption has turned out to be worse than the disease.
Some leaders of the main social and leftist organizations, who previously led the large mobilizations in Colombia, were captured as government officials in some bureaucratic positions or with projects, becoming the unconditional defenders of Petro, with the illusion that they are co-governing. In this way, Petro tries to fulfill his role of neutralizing and deactivating the popular insurgency.
To complete the counter-insurgency role of the State, Petro implements his policy of Total Peace. A new generation of paramilitarism is strengthened, reviving the old structures of the ex-FARC and strengthening all narco-paramilitary groups such as the Clan del Golfo, so that they confront the ELN. In this way, coca cultivation skyrockets and productivity in obtaining cocaine, as the main source of financing for paramilitarism, increases. Petro gives political status to these narco-paramilitary groups and opens negotiation tables with them, while the ELN intends to degrade it as a Gao, or a criminal group, dedicated to drug trafficking.
Despite having initiated dialogue and negotiation with the ELN and having agreed to carry out a process of participation of society, to generate a new National Agreement, which would guarantee political, social, economic and military change; Petro decides to abort this process, failing to comply with the agreements signed at the Dialogue Table, consolidating a rabid anti-subversive discourse, demanding the surrender of the ELN’s weapons in exchange for his illusions, imposing the State of Internal Commotion, reviving the military defense minister, developing plans for military and paramilitary devastation such as those he is advancing in the main regions of the country. obedient to the counter-insurgency doctrine imposed by the Pentagon.
With the sun at its back, this government continues to make speeches about delusional results, when the reality is that it is completely mortgaged and blackmailed by the sectors that have traditionally managed the establishment, without being able to show fundamental changes.
Petro’s disastrous government feeds a climate of political uncertainty, which sectors of the right and the far-right take advantage of, to agitate that alternative political projects are doomed to failure. The construction of a new alternative political project in Colombia involves the consultation of unitary proposals, overcoming the old tricks of sectarianism, arrogance and manipulation, where group or personal interests are put aside and popular and national interests are always put first.
Consequently, the ELN will continue with the commitment to always be with the people in the construction of a socialist homeland. It is imperative that the revolutionary, leftist, progressive and democratic sectors reflect critically and self-critically on the lessons left by this government, so as not to repeat its mistakes and to guarantee a new way of doing politics, truly democratic and grassroots.
We call on all Colombians committed to the mandate of the social outburst, the Political Solution to the Conflict, to persist in the struggle for transformations; in the struggle of the people to be power and to be government; in the realization of a more sovereign, democratic, equitable nation in peace with social justice.