Analysis: Petro's legacy in Colombia is marked by rhetoric and promises

Agustina Viracachá has been waiting four months for an appointment with a specialist at an EPS (Health Provider Entity). Several times she woke up at dawn to go to the hospital and beg for an appointment, because neither the phone nor the website could solve her case.

Agustina has severe migraines, suffers from chronic asthma and feels worse every day. At age 77, he fears that his health will deteriorate before he can access a doctor who can diagnose his condition and prescribe the necessary medications.

Like Viracacha, thousands of Colombians have been direct witnesses to the strain on the provision of health services.

Concern about the health system crisis is one of the topics that Colombians place as a priority in polls and opinion polls regarding the presidential elections. And it is also, along with the impossibility of containing violence, one of the main debts of the administration of Gustavo Petro's government, which, with the elections next Sunday (31), begins to enter its final phase.

"I'm already losing hope of being seen. The last appointment was in October last year and, since then, I've been feeling really bad. Furthermore, I have pain in one leg and I can barely walk anymore," Viracachá tells CNN. "And the medicines are not delivered to the pharmacies where I used to receive them. I live alone and depend on the pension my husband left me. And I can't buy the medicines I need out of my own pocket."

There are patients who practically agonize at the doors of clinics and hospitals, as in the case of Kevin Acosta, a 7-year-old boy who died waiting for medication for hemophilia.

Many promises of reforms and little implementation
Juan Carlos Giraldo, director of the Association of Clinics and Hospitals, states that the problem lies in the funds that the government owes to EPS, that the budget is not enough and that many institutions that provide the service are on the verge of bankruptcy or have had to close.

"There are many disagreements about what the reform should be. This government has made several attempts. More than three years have passed in debates about reforms to the healthcare system. Two reforms were rejected by Congress as unfounded, and currently this reform is still under debate, but in a zombie state", says Giraldo to CNN. "No one knows what its future will be. But what is certain is that whether it is this one presented by the government or another that will be presented by someone else, it must be done. It is urgent, necessary and urgent for the health system to leave the ICU."

The government points to the EPS as responsible for the crisis and claims that many of them misused the resources intended to subsidize the health sector.

Petro publicly defends his idea of a health reform that depends more on the State and not on private EPS, and that establishes a more preventive system focused on the most remote regions of the country.

"One thing is the financial state of the EPS, all of which are private except three, and another thing is the health status of the Colombian people. I understand that the traditional Colombian press confused the two concepts. The health status of people is measured in morbidity rates and mortality rates", said Petro in an interview with Caracol Rádio on May 20.

But the health sector is just one of the reforms that Petro was unable to approve in Congress. His campaign promises also included the reform of justice, the electoral system, political reform and agrarian reform, among other initiatives that foundered in the Legislature.

"President Petro did not make a revolution because, in this country, all these reforms that he tried to carry out were blocked by the extrapolations they proposed. And the current Constitution allows for all the transformations that Petro wanted. What happens is that he did it in the wrong way", Pedro Viveros, a political analyst, told CNN.

"He started the government in an open manner, included sectors from different political currents and managed to pass important laws, including tax reform. And, suddenly, one day he broke the coalition and decided to govern only with his left-wing ideological group. And this deprived him of the necessary majorities in Congress to carry out his social, economic and political reform initiatives", said Viveros.

Polarization and popularity
Some analysts highlight advances in social issues, such as the approval of the labor reform, which gave greater guarantees to workers and reestablished rights such as the payment of overtime, despite the failure of other initiatives that failed to achieve consensus in the Congress of the Republic.

"Placing the social issue on the national agenda is a merit of Gustavo Petro, even though he was half-done in all these ambitious reforms he presented at the beginning of his mandate", said political analyst and columnist for the newspaper El Heraldo, Óscar Montes, in conversation with CNN.

Other experts consider that this was a left-wing government that differed very little from the right-wing or center-right governments that occupied the House of Nariño in the past.

"There is a lot of polarization. And, in fact, this polarization was all that happened in Colombia. In Colombia nothing has changed structurally, but things have changed that people don't notice. This was a symbolic battle, a linguistic battle", says political scientist and analyst Hernando Gómez Buendía.

The corruption scandals affecting several of his former officials, including ministers and directors of administrative departments of the Presidency of the Republic, and the investigations into his campaign financing did not go unnoticed by what Petro himself called the "government of change". Now, the president is promoting the convening of a National Constituent Assembly, according to him, to put an end to these endemic problems in the State.

"It was four years of a government attacking all powers in Colombia. He fought with former presidents, with journalists, with business associations. He was the president of the Republic, democratically elected, acting as head of the opposition. Gustavo Petro spent four years opposing it. And it was an opposition with great rhetorical force, a lot of speech. A lot of noise and few concrete results", concludes Gómez Buendía.

The president, however, is proud of having significant approval for his administration in some opinion polls. Which, for many analysts, is the political capital enjoyed by presidential candidate Iván Cepeda, from the ruling Pacto Histórico party.

"I thank the Colombian people, at the point of reaching the end of my mandate, for having my government's management evaluated positively by 55% of the population. Only López Obrador surpassed this percentage at the end of his government. I say goodbye grateful and grateful. It is necessary to deepen and continue the human and progressive project that we have developed", said Petro in a message on his official X account on May 18, citing the results of a survey.

The economic crossroads

Despite Petro's optimistic statement, the first left-wing government in the contemporary history of Colombia finds itself at a complex crossroads, where the transformative discourse comes into direct conflict with worrying macroeconomic variables, the resurgence of violence in the regions and institutional scandals that have undermined its governability.

Luis Fernando Mejía, former director of the Center for Economic and Social Research, believes that the next president will face many challenges that could complicate his governance. "You will find a country with tremendously deteriorated public finances. In other words, with very little possibility of carrying out a programmatic platform for which this president or president was elected."

"And there are two elements that highlight the seriousness of the fiscal situation in historical terms: the first is the size of the fiscal deficit, which is close to 6.5% of Gross Domestic Product, while historically it was 3.5%. The second point is that this is unprecedented, in an economy that grows just above 2%. And this shows the seriousness of the fiscal situation that Petro leaves behind and that the next government will have to face", said Mejía in dialogue with CNN.

In the field of energy transition, another of the pillars of Petro's promises, the situation is also complex. The aim to reduce dependence on hydrocarbons reduced direct foreign investment in the mining-energy sector, without the country having a replacement infrastructure, reducing valuable revenues from the national budget through the state-owned oil company Ecopetrol.

On a positive note, the government displays a historic reduction in deforestation in the Amazon, around 40%, and the diplomatic success of having hosted COP16 in Cali, in 2024. The balance of Petro's government highlights, according to analysts consulted by CNN, the distance between the rhetoric of political activism and the complexity of State administration.

Violence and the fight against drugs
Although there are sectoral advances in free higher education, in the provision of land so that farmers can cultivate them and maintain their family livelihood, and in environmental conservation metrics, the general balance is obscured by fiscal instability, the paralysis of health services under intervention and persistent rural violence.

In addition, illicit plantations are growing. Colombia is the world's leading producer of cocaine, representing almost two-thirds of total production of the alkaloid, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The difference in approach to the war on drugs between President Donald Trump's administration and Petro's was at the center of the debate and generated several disagreements between the leaders. Whoever takes Petro's place on August 7th will have to reformulate diplomatic relations between the two countries to face a common enemy: drug trafficking.

Source: CNN