This is the alarming x-ray that former President César Gaviria makes about the eight months of the Government: "Gustavo Petro is wrong"

Exclusively for SEMANA, former President César Gaviria questioned whether Gustavo Petro would leave power in four years. “It scares me,” he says


Vicky Dávila: Former president, this is the first interview you have given since Gustavo Petro was president.


César Gaviria: Yes, it is true. Petro was clear from the beginning that he was going to do what he is doing. I knew because he sang it to me in Florence (Italy). So I said: "I better stay quiet

VD: Many consider that Petro ended everything you did in your government. Do you see it that way?

CG: No, he says it like that. He assures that all those laws that we approved after the Constitution are the ones that have the country in trouble. So, he personally has the opinion of him.

VD: And did he tell you?

CG: Yes, he told me.

VD: What did you answer?

CG: That I was wrong. And now that we are discussing these laws, it is obvious that he is wrong.

VD: Gustavo Petro's government has been in office for a little over eight months. It is going well?


GC:No. For example, public order policy is not understood, nor is total peace. I don't know where they are going to stick their heads because insecurity is growing at an impressive speed. Security is going to be the main theme of the coming campaign. It's not even going to be Petro's personality. In economics, I think they have done relatively well because they have Ocampo around, who is a well-trained person with a good track record and credibility. However, they are making mistakes because everything they present is to knock down the growth of an economy that we already know is going to grow poorly this year. So, I don't know where that is going to take us. The country's growth in 2023 may be very low, much less than what the technicians are saying, those gentlemen who from New York and from a desk are saying how much each country is going to grow. I think they say what they intuit and that's it.


VD: I insist, is Petro doing well or bad?


CG: It's obviously not going well. Things have not worked out for him. He has deteriorated a lot since he was president. His public image has deteriorated quite a bit. He, too, has not managed to put together a team that is capable of helping him run the presidency. In addition, he really likes to be and speak abroad, he has that predilection. He has a world of advisers and advisers to whom one does not know how much he believes them or not. That power of those people has been eroding. Petro gets suspicious of people very easily, he gets lazy with people very quickly.

CG: No. The cabinet has a problem of bias and excess left that does a lot of damage. Anything that is official and public is good and anything that is private is bad. There the president especially has several ministers in that attitude.

VD: Who?


CG: No, why am I going to start the task of building a list of enemies that I already have and that the president heads (laughs).

VD: Is the president your enemy?

CG: Yeah, sure.

VD: Why do you say so, former president?

CG: Because he told me.

VD: Don't tell me...

CG: Sure. It seems to him that all the laws we put out after the 1991 Constitution are the ones that have screwed this country up. He is wrong, because Colombia, in general, has good economic behavior, we have coped with it, because we managed to create a labor flexibility that no one else has, although he needs important rectifications because it is beginning to run out. The ideas of the Government are beginning to run out and I think that the trends between one and the other are also blurring the president a lot.


VD: Did you imagine that the Petro government was going to be as it has been until today?

CG: Well, I knew it was going to be similar to what you did in the Bogota City Hall. I always imagined that. There comes a time when he slams the door and leaves. But yes, I did imagine it, because that is his way of being. He's very self-focused and very egotistical, and he has a certain messianic idea of ​​public life and yes, this is what produces that.

VD: The Economist and United States Senator Marco Rubio have used the word “chaos” to define the Petro Government. What do you think?


CG: What we are seeing in the government is the country, as it is. And Petro has a policy that is very foreign to what the country is. For example, they talk about total peace without any foundation. The ELN had 2,000 people when peace was made with the Farc and now it has 5,000. And they put them there by force, without any idea of ​​what they were going to do with them. Among other things, the owners of the drug-trafficking business, imports, crops and everything are Mexicans, and that is why any negotiation ends in Mexico. So that's not going well and I don't think that in the end there will be a negotiation other than a negotiation with some Mexican drug traffickers.




César Gaviria, former president of Colombia. - Photo: juan carlos sierra-week

VD: In the health reform you became the retaining wall and stopped the Government dead to say: "this project is bad and the Liberals are not going to vote for it." Because?


CG: Because people's evaluation of the system is quite positive and they are right. Abroad they highlight Colombia's health policy as good, perhaps the best among developing countries. We even have a system superior to that of many developed countries. So, it is true that many mistakes have been made, but they have been corrected and what needs to be done is to change what needs to be changed. But they want to devastate and the problem is that the Petro Government does not have people who know about health, so the devastation means that the country is going to be or would be at zero, to start over.


VD: So it is very serious…

CG: It's serious, yes.

VD: And did you tell President Petro?

CG: No, I didn't tell him. But I do think that the best idea in the world is not to destroy what we have and that is why we have said so many times to build on what has been built and not to build from scratch.


VD: Why did we come to that health reform of Minister Carolina Corcho? What is the origin?

VG: It's ideological.

VD: Yes?

CG: Sure. Petro sees too much private hand there and what he would like is to make a public system and he says so.


The president also said that the Corcho health reform bill is not going to include any of the changes you are asking for, period.


In the health reform you became the retaining wall and stopped the Government dead to say: "this project is bad and the Liberals are not going to vote for it." Because?


CG: Because people's evaluation of the system is quite positive and they are right. Abroad they highlight Colombia's health policy as good, perhaps the best among developing countries. We even have a system superior to that of many developed countries. So, it is true that many mistakes have been made, but they have been corrected and what needs to be done is to change what needs to be changed. But they want to devastate and the problem is that the Petro Government does not have people who know about health, so the devastation means that the country is going to be or would be at zero, to start over.