Gustavo Petro's tenure as the 34th president of Colombia began with his inauguration on 7 August 2022. Petro, who previously served as mayor of Bogotá, took office after his victory in the 2022 presidential election over the anti-corruption leader Rodolfo Hernández. Petro took office under the political shadow of his predecessor, amid an economic crisis and increased political polarization.
At the time of his election, Petro was a 62-year-old member of Congress; his victory has been attributed to public anger at the political class over years of corruption in politics, economic recession, the COVID-19 health crisis and a rise in violent crime. The crisis the country was in was caused, among other factors, by the weakness of the prices of raw materials; the events revealed underlying weaknesses in the economy including poor infrastructure, excessive bureaucracy, an inefficient tax system, and corruption.
2022 election
Petro won the runoff with 50.42% of the vote to Hernández's 47.35%. Petro dominated in Bogotá and regions on Colombia's Caribbean and Pacific coasts, and received over 81% of the vote in the coastal department of Chocó. Due to an increased turnout among his supporters, Petro received nearly 2.7 million more votes in the second round than the first. The result was noted for a continuing trend of left-wing victories in Latin America, which has been dubbed as a "new pink tide".
Administration and cabinet
Petro was inaugurated alongside Francia Márquez, the second woman and first Afro-Colombian vice president.
On 8 August 2022, after taking office as President of Colombia, Petro announced his pick of José Antonio Ocampo for Minister of Finance and Public Credit, previously holding the same position in Ernesto Samper's cabinet.
In April 2023, Petro asked for the resignation of his whole ministerial cabinet to proceed with its restructuring. By June 2023, he had dismissed his Chief of Staff and the ambassador to Venezuela in response to a scandal regarding illegal wiretapping and possible financing irregularities.
Domestic policy Taxes After the failure of the Duque administration's tax reform, the Petro government aimed to create a system where the population with the least economic accessibility would be affected the least. His government has emphasized the importance of reducing taxes for low-income residents and raising them for those with higher incomes.
Energy On 8 September, the Minister of Mines and Energy, Irene Veléz, held a meeting with various unions, mayors, and other stakeholders to discuss a path to stabilizing rising energy costs.
The minister insisted that there is another Colombia that has different yet just as difficult challenges: "It is about the more than five hundred thousand families that still do not have access to energy at the national level."
On 28 October, during his visit to the municipality of Bosconia, César Petro declared a state of National Emergency to allocate the economic resources that remained from the year's budget to face emergencies. "César lives a paradox that focuses on the climate crisis. I said it in my electoral campaign; here you suffer, but this region also produces the chemicals that generate this pollution: coal".
Environment and climate On 7 November 2022, Petro traveled to Egypt with a delegation of 201 people to discuss and rethink solutions for climate change, one of his main banners was saving the Amazon and protecting water, Petro fired at everyone, including technocrats, in a veiled reference to his predecessor, Iván Duque, who was also at the climate summit promoting one of his books. From the summit, he wanted a common fund with other countries such as Brazil, Peru, Venezuela or the United States to protect the Amazon. Colombia, he announced, will allocate 140 million dollars a year for the next 20 years.
For Andrés Santiago Arroyave, an expert on environmental issues, what the president is asking for, beyond what is said in the decalogue, is that the necessary changes be accelerated to achieve the goals of reducing between 30% and 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality (countries generating the amount of greenhouse gases they can offset) by 2050.
However, he says that something that can generate resistance is that Petro speaks in terms of changes that must take place now, and is taking away the strength of the transition. "From an environmental perspective, the president's timing is correct; There is no longer a deadline to make less immediate changes. But if you look at it in the context of an economic crisis, recession and war, it's different", says Arroyave.
He thinks that it is very difficult for Colombia to give up the generation of fossil fuels in the short term, it is very complex because it is the main economic support of the country. "As tight as the schedule is to stop the advance of climate change, making an abrupt change in this area is something that the economy does not allow. What we can gain, from Colombia, with the insistence on the urgency of the Petro changes is that Ecopetrol increase efforts for the transition, which is something in which this country has a lot of potential. There is a lot of room to grow in wind power and solar power production," he says.
On 20 January 2023, he traveled to Davos, Switzerland to participate in the World Economic Forum, where at the end of his speech at the Petro he spoke about the intentions of the national government to lead an energy transition that allows the development of other industries, like tourism. In fact, during his presidential campaign he has insisted on the need for this sector to have significant economic empowerment, but for this a pacification plan is needed in the country.
From there arose the proposal to implement Total Peace, now understood as a State policy. The president stated that one of the steps to take is to invest in the tourism sector, "we are convinced that, with a strong investment in tourism, given the beauty of the country, and the capacity and potential that the country has in generating clean energy, could perfectly, in a short term, in a transition, fill the gaps that the fossil economy can leave", said the Head of State when closing his speech at the Davos Forum.
Biodiversity As Colombia is a biodiversity hotspot, the administration planned to "carry out fundamental transformations to face the emergency caused by climate change and the loss of biodiversity". In a speech to the UN, Petro connected the "irrational war on drugs" to the destruction of the rainforest ecosystems, as the eradication of the coca plant through glyphosate or fire causes harm to many other nearby plants and poisons the water in the former case. On 10 January 2023, the National Police of Colombia reduced their target coca eradication goal by 60% for 2023.
In March 2023, Colombia and Bolivia announced a joint petition to remove the coca plant, but not cocaine, from the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, a list of narcotic substances deemed illegal, at the 66th Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna. In their contribution to the debate Laura Gil Savastano referred to the inclusion of the coca plant in the convention as a historic mistake.
Education On 17 November 2022 during an intervention in Pinillos, Bolívar Petro announced changes in the education sector focusing on secondary school, Petro assured that the country's education system has to make a transition to the model that is managed on the European continent.
The president concluded the announcement by saying that the ideal would be for this model to be implemented in the Los Pinillos school, "to ensure that the best public education in Colombia can be established in the region that had one of the best educations in the times of the origin of the Republic of Colombia".
Defense On 17 December, President Gustavo Petro commented to various media outlets that the National Government is contemplating the idea of renewing the fleet of combat aircraft of the Colombian Air Force. According to the president, the announcement corresponds to the renewal of the Kfir aircraft fleet, of Israeli origin and that by next year they would be obsolete, because they have been in operation for more than 30 years, the president quoted in verbatim words. I believe that the wives of the current pilots are going to thank me very much, because in reality it was already dangerous to climb on those devices", said Gustavo Petro in the middle of the promotion ceremony for officers of the Military Forces.
Later the Minister of Defense argued in exact words "it is a reality that these planes must be bought and the French planes are the leading proposal. The Dassault Rafale could arrive in 2025 and the old ones would stop leaving service next year, said Velásquez and stated that this decision had been considered for 12 years.
Total peace
Already during his campaign for president, Gustavo Petro introduced his ideas for a Total Peace in Colombia, which aims for an all encompassing and lasting peace in Colombia, using a two-pronged strategy of reducing social inequality and expanding upon the policy of peacemeal negotiations with armed groups of his predecessors. This set of policies included a renewal of peace talks with the remaining left- and right-wing armed groups to the Colombian conflict, particularly the ELN, as well as plea-bargaining benefits to paramilitary successor groups, like the AGC and FARC dissidents. On 4 November 2022, Petro signed into law a total peace bill, codifying negotiation conditions with armed groups. Peace talks with the ELN were finally resumed at the end of November 2022, with the first set of meetings taking place in Venezuela, after the restoration of diplomatic contacts between the two countries.