{"id":14008,"date":"2025-02-10T02:31:51","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T02:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/?p=14008"},"modified":"2025-02-10T02:31:52","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T02:31:52","slug":"colombian-president-calls-on-cabinet-members-to-resign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/?p=14008","title":{"rendered":"Colombian president calls on cabinet members to resign"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description\"><span>Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=237d5e66-da6a-42ff-9d68-067a868fb790\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>Colombian President Gustavo Petro called on members of his front bench to quit on Sunday following a stream of resignations triggered by a chaotic televised cabinet meeting earlier in the week.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere will be some changes in the cabinet to achieve a greater compliance with the programme mandated by the people,\u201d Petro, a leftist former rebel group member, said in a post on X on Sunday evening. He did not provide details of which or how many ministers would be ousted.<\/p>\n<p>Hours earlier, his environment minister and longtime ally Susana Muhamad tendered her resignation, joining two other cabinet-level officials who left their posts in the wake of a rancorous cabinet meeting held on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>During that meeting, Muhamad and other top officials including vice-president Francia M\u00e1rquez, criticised Petro for installing Armando Benedetti, a scandal-ridden political fixer, as his chief of staff. Also criticised was Laura Sarabia, a 30-year-old confidante of Petro, who last week was promoted to foreign minister despite having no foreign policy experience.<\/p>\n<p>Both Benedetti and Sarabia were at the centre of a sprawling government\u00a0scandal known as \u201cnannygate\u201d, involving wiretapping, illicit campaign financing and a missing briefcase of cash. Benedetti has also faced allegations of misogyny and bullying.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>While both have denied wrongdoing, their presence in the government has driven a wedge between Petro and his traditional leftist allies, including Muhamad.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs a feminist and as a woman, I cannot sit at this cabinet table of our progressive project with Armando Benedetti,\u201d Muhamad said during the cabinet meeting, which was broadcast on national television as part of Petro\u2019s bid for transparency.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have submitted my letter of resignation to President Gustavo Petro, motivated by the same reasons as the cabinet meeting last Tuesday,\u201d Muhamad wrote in a text message to the Financial Times on Sunday. \u201cThe president has not yet accepted it.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"n-content-image n-content-image--full\" data-component=\"image-set\"><picture><source media=\"(min-width: 700px)\"  width=\"2290\" height=\"1527\"><\/source><\/picture><figcaption class=\"n-content-picture__caption\"><span>Susana Muhamad resigned as environment minister in protest at the appointment of Armando Benedetti as chief of staff<\/span><span> <!-- -->\u00a9 Luis Acosta\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Jorge Rojas, the head of the presidency\u2019s administrative department, resigned on Wednesday after only a week in the job, alongside culture minister Juan David Correa.<\/p>\n<p>Petro defended Benedetti during the six-hour spectacle, arguing that his \u201ccraziness\u201d was necessary in government. He later said that the infighting was the result of some of his ministers seeking\u00a0to position themselves ahead of next year\u2019s election. Under Colombia\u2019s constitution, the president may not seek a second term.<\/p>\n<p>Petro, Colombia\u2019s first leftist president, took office in August 2022 promising to overhaul the country\u2019s market-friendly economic model by expanding the state\u2019s role in pensions, healthcare and education, while weaning the oil and coal exporter off fossil fuels.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But he has been frustrated by lawmakers that have pushed back on his radical reform agenda while ousting cabinet ministers from the political centre and replacing them with loyalists. His first finance minister, the centrist and investor-friendly Jos\u00e9 Antonio Ocampo, was replaced in April 2023 by Ricardo Bonilla, who resigned amid a corruption probe last December.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe president is a revolutionary, but the government is not,\u201d Petro said during Tuesday\u2019s meeting, in which he also claimed that cocaine is \u201cno worse than whisky\u201d and if legalised it would \u201csell like wine\u201d, even as production of the drug surges in Colombia.<\/p>\n<p>Analysts say that the upheaval in the presidential palace is hampering the government\u2019s ability to tackle a number of crises, including in the country\u2019s north-east, where warring rebel groups have displaced over 50,000 people in the Catatumbo region this year. <\/p>\n<p>A trade war with the US was narrowly averted last month, after Petro initially reneged on an agreement to receive deported migrants. Petro was largely absent from the frantic negotiations that were led on the Colombian side by his since-replaced foreign minister Luis Gilberto Murillo, alongside Sarabia before she took that job. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis turmoil, unfortunately, is yet more proof that the government\u2019s disarray is affecting the country as a whole,\u201d said Sergio Guzm\u00e1n, director of Colombia Risk Analysis, a Bogot\u00e1-based consultancy. \u201cThe government is now realising that it ran out of time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Read the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/237d5e66-da6a-42ff-9d68-067a868fb790\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" rel=\"nofollow\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Colombian President&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14008","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Colombian president calls on cabinet members to resign | inFundPros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Colombian President Gustavo\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/?p=14008\" \/>\n<meta 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