Local and regional authorities throughout Colombia have stopped recognizing the authority of President Ivan Duque and are preparing for the coronavirus without the national government.
Duque and his ministers were sidelined after their failed attempt to illegally revoke measures taken by governors and mayors to protect their constituencies.
Citizens and journalists alike were unable to hide their despair about Duque’s astonishing ineptitude and the chaos he caused.
“Oh my God,” exclaimed news anchor Marta Lucia Fernandez after reporting on the president’s failed power grab and the regional authorities’ rebellion.
“Tremendous son of a bitch. Retweet if you know who I’m talking about,” radio host Catalina Bernal said on Twitter. More than 19,000 followers knew she was talking about Duque, except one who said the president’s political patron, former President Alvaro Uribe, was also an asshole.
While governors and mayors maintained curfews and continued preparing municipal shutdowns, the president and his ministers continued fueling despair.
The president had a “productive meeting” with controversial immunologist Manuel Elkin Patarroyo, who falsely claimed to have found a vaccine for malaria in the 1980s.
Interior Minister Alicia Arango said that she wouldn’t consider shutting down cities until after an outbreak of the virus that threatens to collapse the country’s healthcare system.
Twitter user
In response to migration authorities’ announcement they had expelled 40 tourists for violating a compulsory isolation order, one Twitter user said “if they really wanted to punish them, they would’ve given them Colombian nationality.”