It has been the first tumble of the cabinet of Gustavo Petro, a president who finds it difficult to team up. After only six months of taking power, he dispensed with two faithful followers and a centrist who on his day abandoned his people to support him and join his government.
In a three-minute presidential address, from the Nariño Palace, the president announced that the ministers Alejandro Gaviria, of Education, Patricia Atiza, of Culture, and the Olympic medalist María Isabel Urrutia, of Sports, were leaving office.
Of the trio, Gaviria was the highest profile and the only one leading a crucial portfolio with a large budget. His departure had been anticipated by some political cliques because he had become, along with his colleagues from the Treasury, José Antonio Ocampo, and from Agriculture, Cecilia López, a strong critic of the Health reform, an essential pillar of the Petro administration. . But his past, unlike the other two, put him in an awkward situation.
Gaviria spent six years in charge of the Health portfolio in the administration of Juan Manuel Santos, and had to endure the sharp darts of both the current minister, Carolina Corcho, and the President himself, against previous governments in matters of health.
The fact that he had been a presidential candidate for a center-left movement that warned of the dire consequences of the Historical Pact candidate winning did not help either.
Aware of the differences, he commented in his inner circle that he would remain until August, long enough to present the Education reform, a subject he knew from having been rector of the prestigious Universidad de los Andes.
Now it will be his successor, named on Monday, Aurora Vergara, a doctor in Sociology and close to Vice President Francia Márquez, who will take over.
“The pipes were paid for by Gaviria. He was the most reactive voice in the face of a reform, that of health, which reflected the difference of two completely opposite positions,” he told EL MUNDO to political analyst Gabriel Cifuentes. “He was one of the most sensible, more moderate voices, but his position was untenable for the President, who ended up taking sides with Minister Corcho’s proposal. Gaviria loses an important pulse in the government and generates a schism within the cabinet, involving the most experienced ministers (Finance and Agriculture), the most moderate faction”.
In his opinion, “Petro may be sending a message to his team that there are certain limits to disagreeing with the government’s fundamental proposals. The decision, in any case, reduces the group of more orthodox ministers, radicalises his cabinet a little more and blurs his interest in it being plural”.
As for the departures of Ariza and Urrutia, one of the hypotheses that the opponents are considering is that Petro intends to give bureaucratic quotas to the traditional parties to guarantee their support in the most controversial legislative projects. But the president himself used Twitter, his favorite communication system, to refute such comments.
“Ministerial changes do not depend on the meeting with the presidents of the parties. You can examine who the new ministers are and you will see that they have nothing to do with the informative suggestion that is completely wrong,” he wrote on Tuesday.
What was surprising with both dismissals is that the ministers are convinced Petrists and occupied the heads of entities of little relevance in the country. The two appeared on Tuesday in various media to ensure that they would remain faithful to the cause of the Historic Pact, although they felt very hurt by the way in which they were thrown out.
“I am a person of the left and loyal, I support the president. But I don’t like how they did it. I found out from the presidential address. I would have liked the President to tell me, looking me in the eye,” he told Semana Patricia magazine. Ariza, an experienced artist, declared communist and political activist, 76 years old.
The cause of the resignation of María Isabel Urrutia, Olympic gold medalist and world weightlifting champion, is still not clear.
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