Colombia’s President-elect Ivan Duque has called in experienced executives, dynasty politicians and personal friends of former President Alvaro Uribe to run the country until 2022.
The following people will be responsible for the public administration of Colombia in the coming years.
Alvaro Uribe (Senator)
Alvaro Uribe (Image: Democratic Center)
While officially not a member of the cabinet, Uribe is widely considered the power behind the presidential throne.
Nobody in Colombia would even have heard of Duque had it not been for the active promotion of his political patron, a former Medellin Cartel associate who is investigated for murder by the Supreme Court.
When president between 2002 and 2010, Uribe came under international scrutiny over the mass execution of civilians and other war crimes, wiretapping the Supreme Court and secretly meeting with paramilitary representatives in the presidential palace.
Marta Lucia Ramirez (Vice-President)
Marta Lucia Ramirez (Image: Wikipedia)
Marta Lucia Ramirez is Colombia’s first female vice-president for a reason; she is possibly one of the most experienced and talented career politicians in the country, and a consistent supporter of conservative causes.
Martinez was Uribe’s defense minister between 2002 and 2004 when the mass execution of civilians who were presented as guerrillas killed in combat began skyrocketing.
Carlos Holmes Trujillo (Foreign Relations)
Carlos Holmes Trujillo (Image: Twitter)
Carlos Holmes Trujillo is a traditional dynasty politician who inherited much of his initial political power from his father, a Liberal Party mogul like Duque’s late father.
Trujillo began his political career as mayor in Cali in the late 1980s, the years that the Cali Cartel controlled much of the city. He has since been appointed education minister and ambassador to the Organization of American States.
The foreign relations chief has been one of Uribe’s most loyal allies and has become one of the most influential moderates within their hard-right Democratic Center (CD) party.
Alberto Carrasquilla (Finance)
Alberto Carrasquilla is an economist and investment banker, and one of hundreds of elite Colombians who appeared in the Panama Papers for funneling funds to tax havens.
When Carrasquilla was Uribe’s finance minister between 2003 and 2007, extreme poverty increased from 15.7% to 16.4%.
Guillermo Botero (Defense)
Guillermo Botero (Image: Tu Semanario)
Guillermo Botero had not even left business association Fenalco earlier this week when he already spurred a major controversy, claiming as incoming defense minister that social protest should be “regulated” and count on government approval.
The senior businessman married into the conservative Jaramillo political dynasty and has been a personal friend of Uribe and controversial military commanders for years.
Nancy Patricia Gutierrez (Interior)
Nancy Patricia Gutierrez was one of the most controversial Uribe supporters when he was president between 2002 and 2010 and she was the president of the Senate between 2002 and 2008 when she was forced to resign.
One of the representatives in Congress of the AUC, Rocio Arias, accused Gutierrez of having ties to the now-defunct paramilitary organization, but criminal charges were dropped after no evidence emerged.
Gutierrez used classified intelligence information against political rival Piedad Cordoba, but was also absolved of these criminal charges by the Supreme Court.
Gloria Maria Borrero (Justice)
Gloria Maria Borrero is an ambitious and experienced jurist who is leaving her post as director of the Corporation for Excellence in Justice, a judicial think tank.
Borrero has been an adviser for the government and the judicial branch on multiple occasions during her career.
Jose Manuel Restrepo (Trade)
Economist Jose Manuel Restrepo is the current rector of the elite Rosario University in Bogota and the former chief of Bogota’s Chamber of Commerce.
The scholar has become known for his preferences for small government and a strong private sector, very similar to Duque and one of his political patrons, CD mogul Maria del Rosario.
Andres Valencia (Agriculture)
Andres Valencia is one of the most experienced executives in Colombia’s agriculture sector an has been leading the country’s poultry lobby since 2013.
The Bogota-born economist has moving between government and the private sector since the 1990s and coordinated relations between the government of former President Cesar Gaviria (Liberal Party) between 1991 and 1994.
Valencia has worked in many parts of the world to represent Colombia’s agricultural sector.
Maria Fernanda Suarez (Mining and Energy)
Business administrator Maria Fernanda Suarez has been the finance chief of troubled state-run oil company Ecopetrol since 2015.
The incoming minister was considered the hard-line finance chief of former CEO Juan Carlos Echeverry who was forced to leave the company after brutal privatization measures got the state-run company in trouble.
Before, she occupied several executive positions at international banks like Citibank, ABN Amro and Bank of America.
Jonathan Malagon (Housing)
Jonathan Malagon is the vice-president of Colombia’s Banking Association and a former executive of economic think tank Fedesarollo.
Despite having no more than 33 years, Malagon allegedly studied in Bogota, Madrid and New York City, and worked as an adviser for the World Bank and the United Nations’ development agency.
Maria Victoria Angulo (Education)
Maria Victoria Angulo is Bogota’s outgoing Education secretary and the heir of a powerful political dynasty from Ibague; her father, Guillermo Angulo, was education minister in the 1980s.
The incoming minister has been working in government since the 1990s and has specialized her career in education since 2004.
Sandra Monroy (Technology)
The incoming Technology, Information and Communications Minister Sandra Monroy is a business executive, mainly with experience in the country’s telecommunications sector.
She worked in government as a senior legal adviser for the Communications Regulations Commission between 2011 and 2012 and has degrees in commercial law and business administration.
Ricardo Lozano (Environment)
Ricardo Lozano is an experienced career politician.
The geologist has been working in government since the late 1990s when he became adviser at the Environment Ministry. He has also been deputy director of the IDEAM, Colombia’s meteorological institute.
Juan Pablo Uribe (Health)
Juan Pablo Uribe is a surgeon and the current director of the private Santa Fe hospital in Medellin.
He also has a master in Public Health, and previously was vice-minister of Health and one of the directors of the Organization for Excellency in Healthcare, a Colombian think tank.
Alicia Arango (Labor)
While having studied business administration, Alicia Arango spent her entire career in government.
She began her career at Coldeportes, the country’s sports institute and entered the national government in 1995 as an adviser at the Education Ministry.
In 2002, she became Uribe’s personal secretary at the Presidential Palace. Before leaving office, Uribe appointed her ambassador to the United Nations’ office in Geneva in 2010 where she stayed until Uribe asked her to become a director of the CD.