Colombia’s President Ivan Duque appointed his finance minister to coordinate the transition of power with a delegate of President-elect Gustavo Petro.
The winner of Sunday’s elections has yet to announce who will be coordinating the transition of power with Finance Minister Jose Manuel Restrepo on behalf of the incoming government.
Restrepo and his opposition counterpart will be responsible for the coordination of a smooth transition before Petro formally takes office on August 7.
Duque commits to smooth transition of power, theoretically
Finance Minister Jose Manuel Restrepo (Image: La Republica)
The outgoing president committed to a smooth transition of power after failed attempts to block the full surrender of classified information deemed of interest for national security.
This attempt was blocked by Congress weeks before the first round of elections on May 29.
The national security file would include extremely sensitive issues like the security forces’ response to anti-government protests, and their alleged spying on journalists and critics.
The transition also includes the government’s financial records that will allow the incoming government to prepare its 2023 budget proposal and see how much money there is to finance Petro’s campaign proposals.
The transfer of information could create tensions in the event the incoming government finds unpleasant surprises.
“Nobody is elected to do what he feels like”
President Ivan Duque addressing a forum by the International Freedom Foundation. (Screenshot: Twitter)
After formally committing to a smooth transition of power, Duque resumed his verbal attacks against his elected successor.
At a virtual forum of the conservative International Freedom Foundation, Colombia’s increasingly authoritarian president warned that autocrats “use democracy to assume power and convert it into a dictatorship.”
The problem of democracy in Latin America is not a debate between left and right, but between autocrats and democrats; the former use democracy to rise to power and turn it into a dictatorship, a phenomenon that occurs due to the union of polarization, populism and post-truth.
President Ivan Duque
Ironically, the government of Duque’s political patron, the allegedly criminal former President Alvaro Uribe, bribed congress in 2005 to change the constitution in order to stay in power.
Uribe’s second unconstitutional attempt to stay in power sunk by the Constitutional Court in 2010.
The self-proclaimed “democrat” Duque assured supporters of his political patron that Uribe was “the eternal president” while running for president in 2018.
