Colombia’s first left-wing president took the oath of office on Sunday, promising to fight inequality and bring peace to a country beset by bloody feuds between the government, drug smugglers and rebel groups.
Gustavo Petro, a former member of Colombia’s M-19 guerrilla group, won the presidential election in June by defeating conservative parties that offered moderate changes to a market-friendly economy but failed to connect with voters frustrated by rising poverty and violence against human rights leaders and environmental groups in rural areas.
On Sunday, he said Colombia was getting a “second chance” to tackle violence and poverty. He promised that his government would implement economic policies that helped end long-standing inequalities and help the country’s most vulnerable people. To ensure “solidarity” with the nation’s most vulnerable.
The incoming president said he was willing to start peace talks with armed groups across the country and called on the United States and other developed nations to change drug policies that have focused on the prohibition of substances like cocaine and fed violent conflicts across Colombia and other Latin American countries.
“It’s time for a new international convention that accepts that the war on drugs has failed,” he said. “Of course, peace is possible. But it depends on current drug policies being substituted with strong measures that prevent consumption in developed societies.”
Petro is part of a growing group of leftist politicians and political outsiders who have been winning elections in Latin America since the pandemic broke out and hurt incumbents who struggled with its economic aftershocks.
The ex-rebel’s victory was also exceptional for Colombia, where voters had been historically reluctant to back leftist politicians who were often accused of being soft on crime or allied with guerrillas.
A 2016 peace deal between Colombia’s government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia turned voters’ focus away from the violent conflicts in rural areas. It gave prominence to problems like poverty and corruption, fueling the popularity of leftist parties in national elections. However, smaller rebel groups like the National Liberation Army and the Gulf Clan continue to fight over drug trafficking routes, illegal gold mines and other resources abandoned by the FARC.
Petro won the election by just 2 percentage points and is still a polarizing figure in Colombia, where many have been wary of having former guerrillas participate in politics.
His Cabinet appointments have also been highly scrutinized: The new president picked an international renown economics professor as his finance minister while also choosing an academic who researches the negative impacts of extractive industries as his minister for mining and giving the labour ministry to the head of Colombia’s communist party.
“I think he’s trying to forge a balance,” said Sergio Guzmán, a political risk analyst in Bogota. “He has included the activists he promised to make an integral part of his government, the centrist technocrats who give the market’s confidence, and the different political parties with whom he has to govern to pass anything in congress.”