Coup d’état against Petro? The reasons why the president of Colombia insists they want to remove him

Almost since assuming the presidency of Colombia, in August 2022, Gustavo Pedro He repeated that there is a plan afoot to remove him from power. This week he chose the traditional marches of Wednesday, 1st, for Labor Day – in which the participation of a head of state is unusual – to insist on this. “If they are going to attempt a coup, they are going to face the people in the streets,” he said in front of a crowd gathered in the emblematic Plaza de Bolívar, in Bogotá.

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It has become a hackneyed speech, especially in recent months. “Why are they plotting a coup? Because they are afraid that we will end with impunity. The truth scares them so much that they despair,” Petro wrote on X in May 2023, when he faced protests against his reforms.

A month later, the president spoke of a “soft coup” to decimate the Historic Pact, a left-wing coalition of which he is a part, in Congress. More recently, he used the expression again after the State Council annulled the election of Senator Roy Barreras for dual activism.

“Have you already realized that you are taking away the votes of Historic Pact parliamentarians by suspending them with administrative orders? That is, they are in fact changing the political representation in Congress that the people elected. They took away the presidency of Congress from the Pact and now their votes. It’s the soft blow,” he said in X.

An important feature of this rhetoric is that Petro does not talk about a military coup. The President stressed on Wednesday that “it is not with the tanks in the presidential palace” that the intention is to remove him from power, but rather that a “soft coup” is being prepared focusing on the political and judicial accusations against him.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro speaks during a May Day demonstration. (Photo: AFP) (RAUL ARBOLEDA/)

Petro links the alleged coup attempt against him to investigations into possible violations of electoral limits in his 2022 electoral campaign.

“They now want to say that the popular movement, the Historic Pact and the candidate Petro went beyond the limits because the teachers’ union of the Colombian Federation of Educators (Fecode) contributed money to the Colombia Humana political party,” declared Petro.

Petro also stated that there are differences in the financing of presidential campaigns and accused his predecessor, former president Iván Duque, of ensuring that it was financed with illicit money from the late drug trafficker José Guillermo Hernández, known as ‘Ñeñe Hernández’.

The country’s investigative and monitoring organizations are carrying out several investigations into alleged illegal campaign financing by government officials, including the president’s son, Nicolás Petro.

A woman holds a sign with the image of the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, during a march to celebrate International Workers’ Day. (Photo: EFE). (Luis Eduardo Noriega Arboleda/)

Last Monday, the Instruction Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice opened an investigation against the 20 senators of the Historic Pact for alleged irregularities committed during the campaign in which they were elected deputies in 2022.

Néstor Restrepo Echavarría, doctor in Politics, Communication and Culture, and coordinator of the Master’s in Political Communication at EAFIT University (Medellín), highlights that the coup rhetoric is not new in Petro, which – he considers – depends on it given the weakness of his government .

“Petro is a president with serious governance problems because he has not managed to consolidate a government that can carry out his reforms and has been weak in forming coalitions in Congress. From this logic comes the very Latin American rhetoric that when a government is weak it says it wants to carry out a coup,” he told El Comercio.

However, he highlights that there is strong opposition to the president from several sectors who are currently talking about an ‘impeachment’ for campaign financing and seek to impeach him.

“What exists is a blockade of the Petro government by a Congress that does not work in its favor. It is true that there are many interest groups that talk about removing the president because they do not accept his government, but at this moment this is unthinkable. There are no fundamentals,” he points out.

Petro took advantage of Wednesday’s speech to throw darts at his political rivals and speak to his bases in an environment of growing polarization, an intervention in which the president “radicalized” his speech, according to the newspaper “El Tiempo”.

“The unprecedented participation of a government official in the traditional May 1st served as a platform for him to appear radical, with a narrative similar to the beginning of the polarized electoral campaign two years ago”, observes the media.

In Colombia, one of the most bombastic parts of Petro’s speech was the one in which he announced the break in relations with Israel for “having a genocidal president”, in reference to the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Restrepo highlights that Petro is one of the last politicians who has a speech that privileges the public square, which is why the May 1st marches were the perfect scenario for him. “His strategy was to confront his governmental weakness with what he does best: use the public square. He could have broken relations with Israel last week, but he didn’t, he chose to do it in front of labor confederations and unions and in front of a public compatible with his policies. He did it with political interest”, he considers.

Four former Colombian presidents, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Juan Manuel Santos, considered that the decision will have negative consequences for the country.

“Relations with Israel are based on a very commercial logic, especially with regard to weapons. I don’t know to what extent this continues to be a temporary struggle and how much money can go towards restoring everything. Colombia buys weapons and ammunition from Israel and also does business with planes”, explains Restrepo.

Source: Elcomercio