Petro returns to Colombia and clashes with the justice system

It was the only state visit to Spain scheduled for this year, so Colombia's president, Gustavo Petro, received the most exquisite institutional and personal treatment. On the other hand, ordinary Spaniards did not have many opportunities to show him their feelings, as heavy security measures took precedence over possible spontaneous outbursts of enthusiasm as he moved around the capital. It was therefore not possible to see how Petro's insistence on blaming the Spaniards for being feudal and exploitative, for having imposed a centuries-long yoke of colonialism on the indigenous people, accusations that the Colombian leader made before setting off on his trip and reiterated afterwards, once on the soil that welcomed him with full honours, had struck a chord with the Spaniards.

Petro, who won the Colombian presidency with just over 25 per cent of the vote, was later more friendly in his meetings with the king and the prime minister, alluding to cooperation between the two peoples, to Spain facilitating greater attention to Latin America during its European presidency, and to investors redoubling their commitment to the country he now leads. Before Members of Parliament, as well as before businessmen and journalists from the CEOE and the New Economy Forum, he expressed his concern about climate change, outlining in passing "the need for a radical change in political and economic parameters to counteract the catastrophe that humanity is facing". Changes which, under this pretext, would imply a greater weight of the public sector and, of course, much more aggressive taxation to finance the corresponding reforms, obviously at the expense of the private sector.

Before leaving Spain and boarding the flight to Lisbon for talks with Prime Minister Antonio Costa and President Antonio Rebelo de Sousa, Gustavo Petro clashed with Colombian Attorney General Francisco Barbosa, who had called him a "dictator". The clash had begun before Petro's trip to Spain, over the so-called Gulf Clan, currently considered the most powerful Colombian drug trafficking group. Barbosa had expressed serious reservations about the Colombian head of state's decisions in the framework of his "total peace" policy. Petro had countered by accusing the Attorney General's Office of not having informed him of the ongoing investigations into an operation by the narco-terrorists of the aforementioned clan in which two hundred people were allegedly killed. In the exchange of statements, Gustavo Petro had paraphrased Pedro Sánchez - "who does the Attorney General's Office depend on, eh? Well, that's who" - reminding Barbosa that "your boss is the President of the Republic".  The attorney general countered, already with Petro in Spain, by refusing to accept this hierarchy: "[The president] is not my boss, nor is he the boss of the Attorney General's Office, he has some competences and I have others".

Still in Portugal, Petro released a statement in which he lowered his initial level of aggressiveness: "It is true - he affirms - that in general terms, the prosecutor is not subordinate to any official, but he is subordinate to the constitution and the law".

The Colombian president sought to defuse the tension, after the Supreme Court of Justice had expressed its "concern" over Petro's statements, reproaching him for "his erroneous interpretation of the article of the Constitution", which establishes the hierarchy of judicial functioning. The president of the Court, Fernando Castillo, put the nail in the coffin by signing a document stating that Petro demonstrates "ignorance of judicial autonomy and independence, a founding clause of Colombian democracy and an essential pillar of the social rule of law". The Supreme Court thus backed the attorney general of the Nation, after assuring that "he has no hierarchical superior and that his election is the exclusive responsibility of the Supreme Court of Justice. He is an official whose mission is clearly regulated and framed within the autonomy and independence of the judicial branch".

The Colombian judiciary, like that of its counterparts in Latin American countries dominated by the Bolivarian revolution, fears that Petro is launching an offensive to turn it into an appendage of the executive branch, which will limit itself to certifying the constitutionality of the radical changes he is proposing, under the guise of his plan for total peace and the fight against climate change. The 1985 attack on the Palace of Justice by the M-19, a guerrilla and/or terrorist movement depending on who is describing it, also weighs heavily on his memory. More than a hundred people died in that operation, and Gustavo Petro, then a member of that group, never condemned the attack.

Now, Petro's accusations against the attorney general, almost like the personal accusations made by his Mexican colleague Andrés Manuel López Obrador in his long morning speeches, have caused Francisco Barbosa to take his family out of the country "for fear that they will be assassinated". An eventuality for which Barbosa directly accuses President Petro himself, should it occur.