Bogota mayor Gustavo Petro, the least popular of Colombia, is aspiring to run for president in 2014, his government secretary told the Bogota city council Monday.
“Our intention is for Petro to be in power and to govern Colombia,” claimed newly installed Government Secretary Guillermo Jaramillo.
The top official repeated his predecessor’s aspirations to put the controversial mayor in the country’s highest seat of power to a city council that is trying to impeach the mayor.
These lofty aims were scoffed at by many in local and national government who since January have collected hundreds of thousands of signatures to petition for the impeachment of the capital’s mayor whose approval rating has dropped to 30% according to Gallup Colombia.
Council member Miguel Gomez initiated the movement to impeach Petro in January warning that “we are facing an incompetent government that threatens to destroy Bogota.”
MORE: Process to impeach Bogota mayor moves step closer
The outspoken mayor has lately been criticized for his approach to drug-addiction in the city which he is attempting to solve through providing centers to supply addicts with marijuana to help wean them from the highly-addictive bazuca.
MORE: Bogota mayor wants drug consumption centers
Jaramillo said that if others can make policy, so can Petro. “Should it be that others make policy and we do not?” asked the government secretary. “Like any political organization, the progressive movement wants to govern Colombia.”
Previous Secretary of Government in Bogota Guillermo Asprilla who was recently ousted from his position and disqualified from office for 12 years for practicing law while holding government office, had already revealed the mayor’s intentions to run for president in April. Asprilla said that their goal for Petro is “Colombia and then America. We have a continental project of change.”
One member of the public said that Colombia was a country “without memory, condemned to repeat its past,” and called Petro, an ex-guerrilla, a “murderous terrorist.”