Colombia, a country without a pilot

The first was due to the confrontations between the guerrilla groups of the FARC dissidents, the National Liberation Army and the paramilitary groups for control of the illegal crops and the drug business in the conflictive region of Catatumbo, on the border with Venezuela.

The second was the diplomatic crisis with the administration of US President Donald Trump over the deportations of Colombians, and now a third is an unfortunate televised Council of Ministers, where ministers air their dirty laundry and expose the government's internal political disputes.

What happened on the night of Tuesday 4th February in the Council of Ministers of President Petro's government was a circus and a banquet for the opposition. A historic event in Colombian politics, as it is the first time that a Council of Ministers has been broadcast live on television since Colombian television was inaugurated in 1954.

President Petro, in his characteristic sickly political egocentricity, thought that this media strategy would salvage his image, vilified by the corruption scandals and the low implementation rates of the government programme, which affect the image of him and his administration.

Petro skilfully sought to blame the government's dismal results and administrative blunders solely on his ministers and to subject them to public scrutiny. His director of Metas and right-hand man, Armando Benedetti, drew up the report on the ministers' management, in which the vast majority of them caved in.

In fact, this report led to several ministers reacting against the director of Metas and the new Chancellor Laura Sarabia, the two officials closest to President Petro and the most questioned due to various scandals. It was a mistake on the part of President Petro to authorise the televised broadcast of the Council of Ministers, when Law 23 of 1923, still in force, states that it must be absolutely confidential.

This is how Petro himself caused a spectacle of confrontations between his officials, where the message he sent was that it is a divided government, without leadership and turned into a kind of circus, without a clear horizon and that most of the ministers are incompetent.

President Petro went for the wool and came away fleeced again, because the scuffles that broke out in that fateful Council of Ministers showed that he is a president with very weak leadership skills when dealing with his subordinates. Colombia is left as a country without a pilot and with a government that resembles a ship adrift with a pilot whose only aim is to sell an image of a populist and messianic leader in a permanent political campaign, but who is not focused on governing efficiently, but on putting on a media show to be the centre of the country's news agenda.

It also became clear that President Petro appointed ministers who were not capable of carrying out the tasks of government. In the speech of the recently appointed Foreign Minister Laura Sarabia, it became clear that she does not have the stature to hold that office. The Minister of Defence, Iván Velázquez, said that due to the government's lack of coordinated decision-making, the Armed Forces have not been able to reach coca-growing and conflict zones such as El Plateado to fight the guerrillas, the paramilitaries and drug traffickers. 

Vice-President Francia Márquez took advantage of the situation and lashed out at President Petro and his two squires, a speech that profoundly weakened the government.

Now, with the backing that President Petro gave to the director of Metas Benedetti as his squire, after being the target of criticism from the vice-president, the national director of Planning, the minister of the Environment and the director of Social Prosperity, practically the last three were left out of the cabinet.

The message left by the Minister of Education, Daniel Rojas, is that he took the job to learn, he has not measured up and has become another of President Petro's big mistakes in appointing to the post an official with no experience and no knowledge of education issues. The message that remained from the director of Social Prosperity, Gustavo Bolívar, is that he does not have the stature to be president. In conclusion: the government of President Petro sent a message that Colombia is a country without a pilot. 

@j15mosquera