New Era for Colombia with de la Espriella Accession

Colombian lawyer, businessman, and politician Abelardo de la Espriella has been sworn in as president of Colombia, marking a 180 degree shift in policies in the country, in particular as regards its search for peace.  

Transcript

Jon Bonfiglio 0:00

Hi everyone, welcome back. And today we're going to head to Colombia, where on Friday, 7th of August, Abelardo de la Espieya, also known, self-declared with the Monica El Tigre, the tiger, has been inaugurated as the next president of the country of Colombia. De la Espriella is a pretty notorious extreme right winger now, volatile, easily angered, definitely flamboyant, multi-millionaire lawyer and business owner who, remarkably, I think, pretty remarkably, has never once held public office. Interestingly, he's also a US citizen, dual national, and his children, his four children were all born there. He wasn't always a hardliner. He used to live in Florence and was a regular at the opera and managed a rum label and a fashion brand, both called Del Espie Style. But it was his legal career which really sort of launched him into the public eye, in which he's represented paramilitaries, football stars, and top-tier questionable uh individuals. But now, of course, he's in the next phase of his uh life, which is a political career in in Colombia, as president of the country, no less. He's vowed to remake um the nation in its entire in its entirety. Interestingly, the the inauguration, presidential inaugurations almost always take place in Bogota, but this time it took place in Cali, the sort of west-southwest of the country, which is a kind of signal of intent, I think, because Cali is famously volatile. Um, it's in a region which uh in which multiple um illegal uh sort of cartel groups and paramilitaries dissidents uh operate. And by hosting that, he's sort of flexing a muscle and issuing a warning. Um he is um he went after the integration to visit a military battalion for a press opportunity, and he has issued a one-month ultimatum to all of these different groups. Um he's declared all peace negotiations dead and has warned these factions to surrender to the rule of law or face military consequences. His agenda in brief, I mean, uh yes, as just mentioned, he is intent on crushing armed insurgents. He said he regularly refers to his genitals, interestingly, and it's one of the things that has sort of made him sort of stood him out in the same way, say Javier Mile in Argentina and his and his chainsaw, and also very sweary. He keeps saying that he he has the balls to bring um to restore order to to Colombia. Uh, he also is, of course, um going to align his government and Colombia generally to to the United States. I mean, it goes without saying, in a way, that a lot of his rhetoric um is aligned to and sort of comes in under the sort of the Donald Trump playbook, and he is also going to intent on overhauling the system by dismantling leftist uh policies of his predecessor, Gustavo Petro, uh, cut state spending, and undertake a massive deregulation drive, all pretty standard things of the um uh policies of the right. He'll say that Colombia is open for business. His critics will say, of course, that he is selling it off. It does mark a uh marked um a pretty significant regional shift, not just with Colombia, but with a number of other countries, of course, that have gone to the right in the recent past. And that would be a significant um change in any age, but all of this is more resonant in the age of Trump and the new pronounced all-consuming Monroe doctrine, with uh which will, which already has had, but will continue to have political, social, environmental, and military uh consequences already ahead of the inauguration. And on the day of the inauguration itself, he met with the likes of Chilean far-right leader Jose Antonio Cast and Argentine again, Javier Mele. Um curiously, Gianni Infantino was also present. Um, I guess, in a way, no great surprise, even though he is head of world football's world governing body. He definitely, Infantino, um, aspires to a lot of this sort of the autocrats' playbook in terms of making the organization his own personal fiefdom. And it's um in large part one of the reasons why he's got himself in in trouble in the recent past with this sort of whole privatization of football situation, fiasco, because of course he didn't run that past anybody. That was a deeply personal project, which he thought, again, akin to the likes of Trump and the Las Pieya and Javier Melee, that he was going to be able to drive forward just because he wanted to. Um, he's also, I think it's worth saying, already designated the city of Medellin as regional headquarters for this um notorious shield of the Americas project in the United States, which is on the face of it as security and anti-trafficking, as a security and anti-trafficking uh rationale, uh, but is uh broadly seen to be about rewarding um those those leaders that are in step with Donald Trump and punishing those who who are not. Uh just a word for Gustavo Petro, uh the outgoing president and his his legacy. I think the first thing I'd say is that he's not disappearing. He has interestingly kind of a renewed energy of resistance to him. He's called on social movements across the country to organize themselves into people's militias, which is a hell of a phrase to use, definitely not stepping back with that and to defend themselves against, and again, his words, the fascists. There is, I think, um, at least at this point, an enduring legacy with Gustavo Petro's tenure, four years in in Colombia, of course, in becoming president. He broke the historic monopoly of conservative, of the conservative and elite rule, and also established the left as a sort of long-standing force in in Colombia. Then there was a whole total peace project, which sort of stuttered, I think it's fair uh to say, but nonetheless, the fact that you know that that marked such a departure, of course. Uh, I mean, it was before him in 2017 that the FARC and the peace process began, but it really was Gustavo Petros' idea that all members, everybody who was involved in the in the ongoing war in in Colombia could come to the table and and um be a stakeholder in the future peace um of the country. That of course now is it's been thrown out the window completely by the Raspberry, who said that the peace process is entirely dead. He also, uh Gustavo Pedros, significantly narrowed the country's deep inequality gap and positioned Colombia as a global leader on international climate activism. To what extent any of those, I mean, of course, we know that the peace race is not going to survive that, but to what extent any of those other factors survive this new administration, this new de las Pieya presidency is open to conjecture because, of course, the Las Prie has made it his business to um to have everything that's gone before specifically Gustavo Petro's leftist administration sort of be wiped right uh right away from the ledger.