I told you...get ready now

By: Francisco Santos - 17/03/2025

Gustavo Petro wants, first and foremost, to stay in power. He's not a strategist; his personal problems prevent him from doing so, but he is a great opportunist. Well, the opportunity presented itself, and there's no doubt about it, he's going to seize it.

The proposal for referendums to try to push through his reforms is an excuse. It's an umbrella covering his true intention: to set the country on fire. It's easy to calculate how nearly 14 million votes are likely to be obtained to approve the labor reform or the health reform. The real objective is to repeat the violent blockades of 2019 and 2021 to remain in the Nariño Palace.

Petro has already begun to justify the replication of these violent moments and the chaos he seeks to create to generate the conditions that allow him to remain in power. In various interviews, he hinted at what was coming. On February 26, before the reforms collapsed, he told the Spanish newspaper El País that he had failed in believing he could carry out a revolution while governing, adding—this is crucial—that "the people do that." It couldn't be clearer.

Many, with good reason, believe that a president as discredited as Petro's no longer commands rallies. What we mustn't lose sight of is that what truly interests him is creating chaos and destruction, and to achieve this, he only needs his frontline activists, with the support of drug traffickers, the ELN, and the FARC infiltrators, just as happened in 2021, to paralyze the country, subjugate institutions, and achieve what he wants, which is not reforms but what he calls "the revolution."

Let's not lose sight of the fact that Petro is not a democrat who respects the law and institutions. He's a populist similar to Chávez, but more similar to Maduro, as he doesn't hold a candle to the former and compares better with the latter. To think he truly wants these reforms is to go off on a tangent. We can't forget that he, like other populists like AMLO and Chávez, who also said so, isn't interested in helping citizens escape poverty, because "they'll become right-wing." What he cares about is keeping them poor and giving them up in exchange for the scraps the government hands them, like the CLAPS (Social Security Act) that Alex Saab enriched himself with in Venezuela, barely enough to survive.

The labor unions have already launched an indefinite national strike, supposedly due to the collapse of the reforms, but in their statement, they recall the "social" uprisings of 2019 and 2021 that led to Petro's election. They don't even hide the fact that they are part of his violent agenda. And Congresswoman Susana Boreal, from the Historic Pact, justified the blockade of the country's main highways in a congressional debate. Want more? There's more.

The indigenous people, especially the two organizations financed by Petro with hundreds of billions, the Cric and the ONIC, joined the national strike so that these resources continue to be handed out to them. Petro buys this support and pays for it. More than 250 buses are coming to Bogotá to arrive on the 18th and cause as much chaos as possible. This is just the beginning.

The question is: are we going to allow a repeat of what happened on the 19th or 21st? And if they start blocking cities, we already know it only takes a few. Are we going to let the country fall back into that chaos, with one difference: the top commander of the Armed Forces supports these strikes and is very likely to tell them: "Let them stop and let them blockade, no matter the cost"? Don't forget, "That's what the people do," who, in this case, are those few who, supported by violent individuals, want to bring a country to its knees, with the leadership and support of none other than the president.

On the 18th, the country will be set ablaze again, fueled by Petro's ego. We already know that union organizations have little influence and that those 250 stings with Indigenous people have two objectives: first, to intimidate, and second, to try to show some traction. What's missing is the addition of criminal organizations, which, I have no doubt, will reappear where they did before. We only have to go back to 2021 to find out how this attack on democracy will unfold in an asymmetric war that is trying to be legitimized with supposed support for reforms that Congress failed to approve.

By the way, when something similar happened and Petro was a congressman, he asked for Congress's decisions to be respected. Obviously, consistency is not one of the president's hallmarks, as he brazenly changes his mind whenever it suits him. However, this case is different, because ultimately what Petro wants is for a country he's burning to create conditions where he can stay.

The question is: what are we going to do? Let's prepare to defend democracy and freedom.

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».