In politics, the honeymoon is called the period that goes from the beginning of the mandate of a newly elected president, in which all his acts shine and are well received, until the first blow arrives. The time can be more or less long. And in part it is driven by the wear and tear left by the outgoing president. Gustavo Petro has started his stage even before he started commanding. The first movements of him and the turn towards the center has removed the image that he projected in many. The Castrochavism that was attributed to the candidate is no longer used to refer to the president-elect and has little to do with some of the figures that will form the next cabinet, well-known and respected politicians, with extensive experience, and of a moderate nature. The latest semi-annual survey has shot Petro to 64% approval, 22 points more than in February.
“He has shown himself to be a much less radical and polarized person than before. He has sent unity messages, he has listened to his former political opponents and I have launched a pending social agenda”, says Eugenie Richard, professor and researcher at the Externado de Colombia University. She considers that Petro’s position regarding the report of the Truth Commission —which he embraced unlike Iván Duque—, the meeting with Uribe, the ministers chosen so far and announcements such as the tax on sugary drinks have great symbolic power. . “They mark a different style of government from the previous one, with their own agenda, more social,” she adds.
The numbers speak for themselves: Petro has never been so loved in Colombia. This is his all-time high. In 2011, when he was about to be appointed mayor of Bogotá, he reached 59%. In addition, he has now lowered his disapproval to 22%, 18 points less than in March, the moment in which the primaries were held and the electoral race began. So far it has all been good news. At the forefront of economics, it has placed a prestigious economist such as José Antonio Ocampo, professor at Harvard and Yale; he has left the agrarian reform, a hornet’s nest, in the hands of the respected Cecilia López; he put the conservative Álvaro Leyva in charge of the Foreign Ministry; and the progressive intellectual Alejandro Gaviria in Education. In general, all these appointments have been well received even by the opposition.
Petro and his advisers knew they had to defuse petrophobia in order to reach the presidency. For two decades, the dominant political discourse was conservative and from there and some approaches that he himself had with the traditional Latin American left he earned the fame of extremist with which he went to the polls in 2018. Then he was defeated by Álvaro Uribe’s dolphin Ivan Duke. In these four years, the failed conservative government placed him as the favorite to be the next president. From the social explosion of last year came the need for a change. Petro represented it, although it still generated a lot of resistance in some sectors.
In the last 18 months, he has shaped his image a lot, getting closer to the idea of a leader that Colombians have, a very presidential country. He won by a very narrow margin against Rodolfo Hernández, and was aware from the beginning that he had an important part of the country against him. For this reason, in his first speech as the winner, he extended his hand to those who had not voted for him and said that he would be president of Colombia, not of one of the two colombias. In view of the results of the surveys, the speech has permeated.
For analyst Jorge Restrepo, Petro has been able to read the political moment. “He has an enormous personal ability to interpret the needs of citizens, and represent them in public discourse; ability that his opponents have recognized. And he embodies a need for change not only on political leaders but on the political system as he represents a group of people that he had never accessed,” he explains. That, he points out, must now translate into establishing a relationship between citizens and leaders based on service. “We’ll see how much it works.” On August 7, he will take office and the moment of truth will begin.
subscribe here to the EL PAÍS newsletter on Colombia and receive all the informative keys of the country’s current affairs.
#Petros #popularity #skyrockets #term #begins