Santos Government

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President Santos’ assessment of 2012

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Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos offered an upbeat assessment of 2012 in an interview yesterday with El Tiempo in which he highlighted record employment growth and low inflation as evidence of the success of his government in this tricky year for the commander-in-chief personally and politically.

President Santos has suffered a dramatic drop in his popularity over the course of 2012 as his government has stumbled over its handling of constitutional reform, its controversial move to enter into peace talks with the FARC, and the disastrous response to the International Court of Justice’s decision to award Nicaragua large swathes of Colombia’s maritime territory in the San Andres archipelago.

While Santos’ popularity has fallen at home and as opposition to his administration has grown – particularly from the right, in the form of ex president Alvaro Uribe, his star has continued to ascend internationally. Spanish daily El Pais has labelled the president the top Latin American personality of the year, principally for his bold move to seek peace with the Marxist FARC guerrillas.

In the interview with El Tiempo, Santos defended his record over the past 12 months highlighting the creation of 2.5 million new jobs (since coming to power) as a major achievement, alongside sustained economic growth, and inflation rates as low as 2.3%.

The president also highlighted Colombia’s lowest homicide rate in 30 years, and the record numbers of top guerrillas and narcos captured or killed over the course of 2012, as evidence of the country’s improving security.

Santos referred to the “slow” but “progressing” peace talks with the FARC in Havana which he hopes will conclude in September 2013 when dreaming of “celebrating next Christmas in peace”.

Social policy has been a defining feature of this government and the president highlighting the growing numbers of families who have moved out of poverty, as well as the handing over of 100,000 houses for the poor expected to take place over the coming months.

For Santos, 2012 has been a year of challenges but also successes. He emerged successfully from an operation to remove a cancerous tumour on his prostrate in the autumn and has battled the first signs of a congress beginning to flex its muscles after two years of dancing almost unanimously to his tune.

2013 will mark the expected departure of sections of his coalition as politicians begin to jockey for position ahead of the presidential and congressional election races held in 2014. Campaigns are unofficially already under way and Uribe is expected to announce early in the new year the formation of his list of senate candidates.

Santos has remained tight-lipped on whether he will seek re-election and avoided mentioning the issue during the interview. 2013 will be dominated less by new laws and more by a government desperate to present evidence of its successful implementation of the legislative programme it pushed through in the first two years. It will also be characterized by a highly politicized and polarized debate as Uribistas attempt to recapture some of the power they feel is their’s, but has been sequestered by Santos.

Although for many Santos has had an unfortunate year, it will be remembered for the peace talks with the FARC, which if successful will secure the president’s place in history as one of the nation’s great leaders. All that is to come.

 

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German Vargas Lleras – Presidente?

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Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos appeared on Friday to throw his weight behind top cabinet ally, housing minister German Vargas Lleras’ possible tilt at the presidency in 2018.

Rumours of Santos’ support for the popular and charismatic Vargas Lleras have circulated for over two years, but confirmation of the president’s wishes were revealed to La FM listeners 48 hours ago:  “He has all the necessary qualities to be president, and I would like to see him in this role one day”.

Just a fortnight ago Vargas Lleras reiterated his unconditional support for Santos and is not expected to run should his boss decide to pitch for re-election in 2014. Vargas Lleras is likely to play a major role in this campaign – using it is a platform for 2018.  His work as interior and housing minister is central to the Santos regime’s efforts to present a progressive platform.

Vargas Lleras is part of Colombia’s political oligarchy, grandson of 60s president Carlos Lleras Restrepo and  is currently in charge of delivering a programme of free housing to the nation’s poor. This role has helped him to continue to grow the popular base of support not only crucial for his electoral mathematics, but also in his “positioning” as a One Nation politician.

During the La FM interview Santos hinted at the working relationship between the two men who are said to share the same instinctively liberal politics. Like Santos, Vargas Lleras left the Liberal Party early this century to establish an alternative movement; while Santos formed the U Party, Vargas Lleras became the head of the Cambio Radical party, the group from which he launched the 2010 presidential campaign.

Since joining the Santos government, Vargas Lleras has been consistently cited as a top performing minister and also as a successor to Santos.  Assuming Santos is re-elected in 2014 he is almost certain to face a congress much less willing to bend over backwards for him as it has done over the last two years. Ex President Alvaro Uribe, now the most vocal opposition politician in the land is set to launch a list of candidates for the congress a number of which have a very real prospect of becoming elected. Should this happen, congress will be divided and Santistas will find their power reduced significantly.

A possible scenario is that Vargas Lleras, a consummate congressional politician, returns to front Santos’ relations with the parliament, providing him with the profile and visibility necessary to attack the Uribista rump – quite conceivably the largest or second largest group in the senate.

In this case, with Santos unable to run for a second re-election, Vargas Lleras would be anointed his bosses successor to fight against an Uribista candidate in 2018.

Is this mere futurology? Quite possibly.

A week is famously a long time in politics, so five years is a life time. Nevertheless, as unpredictable as Colombian politics can be, it is almost a universal truth that those who belong to the top political families end up in the top political jobs.  Vargas Lleras is as talented as he is ambitious, as charismatic as he is experienced. A right-wing liberal who has delivered for the poor. It sounds a very possible winning combination.

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Uribe v Silva: Colombia´s combative democracy

Colombia´s Ex-President Alvaro Uribe went to war this week with his former defence minister Gabriel Silva in what Colombia Politics sees as the start of a long and ugly election campaign for 2014.

Uribe accused his old comrade, who was in post for the final year of government following President Santos´departure (to kick start his election campaign), of being a “social climber”, an “inept bureaucrat”, and an “opportunist”. Uribe also threatened to sue Silva for remarks the latter made about the ex-president´s reluctance to order a mission against FARC top brass Iván Márquez who, at the time, was hiding out in Venezuela.

Silva, an uber loyal member of President Juan Manuel Santos´ inner circle, had earlier in the week written a polemic attack on Uribe´s speech to last month´s U Party general assembly meeting, a piece that ignited the indignation of Uribistas and appeared to delight President Santos who promptly retweeted the article to his near 1.5 million followers.

Many see the president´s decision to forward the article as an implicit endorsement of Silva´s words. Since coming to power Santos has remained true to his promise not attack his former boss. But the gloves have now come off. At the U Party gathering Santos, although refusing to name his predecessor, criticised the action of the “ruffians” who came to event to try to show who was boss. Now, three weeks later and it appears as through Silva has been given a let off the leash – the president´s attack dog (allowing Santos himself to remain above the fray.

Colombia´s media is in almost universal agreement that this battle is unsavoury, and demeaning, concluding that both Silva and Uribe are set to see a negative effect on their standing among voters. For Silva this matters less, as he is a virtually unknown entity. The election aspiring Uribe, on the other hand, has more to lose, something Santos – the ultimate chess player – has quite clearly calculated.

Santos´ short and medium term electoral tactic will be to marginalize Uribe and try to cast him as an extremist, drunk on power and willing to promise and say anything to get back onto the national political stage. Uribe appears dangerously close to falling into this trap.

Shrillness will, in the long run harm Uribe. His base of supporters will remain but he will find it increasingly difficult to reach out to those in the centre, to build the coalition he needs, and he once relied on.

The media are wrong too to allow Santos to win this battle so easily. Sure, it was an odd move for Uribe to threaten legal action against Silva, but there is nothing inherently wrong with verbal conflict and a clash of ideas in the political process. By pretending that there is the media consciously or unconsciously negatively spin Uribe´s actions.

Colombia has long suffered from a certain tyranny of unanimity in which the president is the only figure that counts, and where –organized – opposition is virtually non-existent.

Opposition is healthy – indeed necessary – for democracy, and bloody, ugly, vicious fights are what all good, mature parliaments are made of. It is the way the voters find out the truth and they way politicians are forced to defend their decisions. It´s accountability, stupid.

The Colombian media complain of the so-called polarization of the nation as though it were a bad thing that not everyone agrees with the president, as though having a choice before the electorate were a vulgar and unwanted nuisance.

Colombia´s political oligarchy and closed political class has led the media to expect patrician governments. The history tells us that for decades the Conservative and Liberal parties alternated power, operating a virtual pact – “it´s your turn this time, and our turn next”.

Uribe´s campaign to return to power through the senate is forcing the governing classes to view politics differently, to begin to understand that bureaucracy is one thing, and that participative open democracy quite another.

The media may not like the fight much but they should rejoice it. Not only will it provide them with acres of column inches, it is also a sign of the birth of a more direct and combative politics.

Long may the fight live on.

 

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Santos to US: ´decriminalize drugs´

Santos arrives in the US, photo, President´s Office

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos touched down in the USA on Sunday ahead of an intense round of diplomatic meetings, the highlight of which will be a key-note address to the UN General Assembly.

In discussion with students of the University of Kansas the president today confirmed this speech will focus not only on the peace talks with the FARC – which he revealed will begin in a fortnight – but also drug decriminalisation.

Santos believes Colombia has the ´moral authority´ to talk to the world about a ´alternatives´ to the so-called war on drugs.

The president´s goal is to convince the UN to initiate a series of studies into possible strategies for establishing a new regime of control which he argues will ´strengthen the fight against narcotrafficking´.

Earlier this year, during the Summit of the Americas held in Cartagena, Santos brought together the region´s heads of state to agree to start this process of policy change. It was the first time the US agreed to approach the issue in this way, in front of the world´s media.

Decriminalisation requires international cooperation, and Santos is hopeful of securing the commitment of those countries where the market for drugs is greatest. Colombia may be leading the debate, but Europe and the US must start to follow if it is to take hold.

For Santos, the war on drugs is failing…or it has already failed.

Despite the billions invested by the US in Mexico and Colombia, and despite the success of the Uribe government in debilitating the FARC, narco-trafficking remains one of the world´s most profitable businesses.

So long as the product remains illegal, criminal actors will flood the market with overpriced and low-quality goods. Peace is difficult to achieve while right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing guerrillas sustain their armies and fill their pockets with such ease.

Most in the north and across the Atlantic are blissfully ignorant of the effect of their drug consumption. They instinctively support the idea of a war on drugs, but are not forced to examine the consequences or the effectiveness of the strategy. 

The lives lost are on a different continent.

So while the US directs aid to Latin America, the direct and indirect cost of the narco-business mean that these countries are in effect subsidising the US´ habit.

The truth is, it is only the cartels that appear committed to the war. The kingpins have power and money – they are not about to cede this to a half-hearted campaign by anti-narcotics offices in the US or by the limited  fire power of the military.

So Santos should tell the world straight. Pay for the war, fight it, or change the strategy.

Santos was given his first government job by ex-president Cesar Gaviria (1990-94) who governed the country during Pablo Escobar´s reign of terror. Gaviria knows more than most the impotence of the state against the might of well-financed criminal gangs.

Gaviria has dedicated his political afterlife to the campaign for decriminalisation, and he has undoubtedly influenced his former protegé´s thinking.

We are two weeks away from the start of peace talks with the FARC. Success is at least in part dependant on the treatment of the issue of narco-trafficking.

Peace in Colombia is a dream that without a serious rethink on the global approach to illegal substances may well prove impossible to realise.

Santos will make the case for change on Wednesday. We must hope world leaders begin to listen.

The world´s consumers must start to pay for the damage they inflict on the producers.

Also published on Redes Colombia

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Colombia’s Santos sacks cabinet to save his government

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos demanded the mass resignation of his cabinet Wednesday in an attempt to re-launch his flailing government, and kick-start the 2014 re-election campaign.
After a catastrophic few months for the president in which popular support for his administration has plummeted, and during which the FARC guerrillas reappeared as major players on political stage, Santos has decided that the fight back must begin.
The nation awaits news of the changes that Santos will make to his ministerial team, but the talk is that they will be wide-ranging and dramatic.
At stake is the future of the National Unity coalition government as parties decide whether to stick with Santos or join Uribe’s opposition movement.  It remains unclear whether Santos will be able to head off the Uribe threat – his tactic is to hand out key cabinet positions to the parties discontent with the government’s direction.
Also in play is the quest for peace. There has been talk – today confirmed by W radio station – that the government are already negotiating with the FARC.  How will this play in the nation? It is almost certain to pull apart sections of the coalition and polarize the electorate.
Santos must react by forming a cabinet that is politically strong, and able to energize the public.  Above all, Santos knows he must change his cabinet into an electioneering force, able to communicate the successes of the government, and unite the nation.
But until now the president’s team has failed connect – especially with those outside of the capital,Bogotá.
Why? Santos has surrounded himself with a team of technocrats – a necessary evil given the president’s desire to ensure the first two years of his administration were defined by major policy reforms.
We are now in the second period of the 2010-14 mandate, however, and the demands are different – they are necessarily now more political, with a capital P.
The end of the ‘dream team’
When Santos came to power in August 2010, the Colombian press labelled his cabinet the ‘dream team’. The collective wealth of talent and glittering CVs of those within the new government was contrasted with ex-president Uribe’s court. There was talent in Uribe’s team sure, but loyalty and commitment to the cause was prized above all else.
Uribe’s ministers were subordinates while Santos has adopted a ‘first among equals’ approach to governing; delegating and devolving power.  All this was fine when things were going well, but following the crises of the past months, and with the upsurge in FARC activity, the country now demands strong leadership.
So, who will Santos replace?
While it is important to see which personalities change, the real decisions Santos must make are how to keep his coalition partners happy.
Last month the Conservatives demanded changes to the health and education ministries, and Santos must hand out these – or similar – goodies if he is to keep the center-right on side. Likewise, the president is also mindful of a threat from the center-left, and is said to be in talks with the Green Party’s Lucho Garzon to bring him into the top team.
Given the need to re-position the cabinet and the requirement to tie together the coalition, there are plenty of reasons to suggest at least half of the cabinet could go.
The ministers of health, education, transport, and environment appear first in the firing line. It is not only the Conservatives who have attacked the health and education ministers, polls show the nation as a whole is less than content with their performance. At the same time, the transport minister Peñalosa is in real trouble as he faces accusations of corruption following the award of lucrative state contracts to members of his family, and while the environment minister Frank Pearl is considered a solid performer, he looks set to be moved to become the spokesman for the government’s peace efforts (a role he has performed in previous governments).
These expected changes could be followed by a second rung of ministers who may well also face the axe. The interior minister Renjifo is new in his position but has been on notice from day one – he arrived at the worst possible time, coinciding with the institutional chaos and the breakdown in relations between the congress and the executive caused by the failed Justice Reform bill. Señor Renjifo is a close friend and ally of Santos so it is expected he will be moved rather than dumped. And finally signals also suggest that Santos is frustrated at the glacial speed at which agriculture minister Restrepo is implementing the land restitution policy – a key pillar of the Santos administration’s reform agenda.
A new pluralism
All this speculation is part of an emerging pluralism in Colombian politics. The country appears to be in a form of shock this morning – but the reality is cabinet reshuffles (perhaps on a less dramatic scale, of course) are part of the normal structure of political life in European countries. While changeswere made during the Uribe years, there was never a mass resignation; it is over ten years since the last time a president pulled the plug on his entire cabinet.
Why is this the case? Put simply, it is the first time in modern Colombian politics that the issue of re-election has been a dynamic. The constitution of 1991 placed a one-term limit for presidents of the republic, a law that was amended early this century to permit Uribe to stand again in 2006. But while Uribe was virtually guaranteed victory that year, the same is not true for Santos; his re-election is now anything but a foregone conclusion.
As a result there are politicians or all shades ‘examining their conscience’ and vacillating on whether to support his candidature.
In short, while there was never an imperative for Uribe to make such a dramatic move because he was never in threat of extinction, Santos has been compelled to act to save his political bacon.
So Santos has sacked his cabinet, but will this save his government?
The last few months have been game changers. A perceptible deterioration in the country’s security situation has been compounded by a series of institutional crises that have threatened the governability of the country.
If Santos’ bold move yesterday fails to arrest the dramatic decline in voter support and hold together his coalition he is doomed.
We must await the puff of smoke to see who emerges in the president’s new team before we draw any conclusions about the likely success of this tactic.
Author Kevin Howlett is a political commentator and owner of political weblog Colombia Politics. Follow him on Twitter or join him in the debate on Facebook.
This was a piece for Colombia Reports.

 

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Juan Manuel Santos – a tale of two presidents

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos appears to be loved abroad but is dangerously close to becoming loathed at home.
We are halfway through the four-year mandate and the president’s support is plummeting at an alarming rate. Approval ratings stood at 87% less than a year ago while they now hover below the 50% mark.
The international community thinks so highly of Santos — the shuttle-diplomacy president — that there is talk of his becoming the next U.N. Secretary General.
The contrast at home could not be starker however, with a poll by El Tiempo newspaper this weekend revealing that over 60% of Colombians would not again vote for Santos.
Too diplomatic for his own good?
There is little doubt that Santos is an excellent statesman. Colombia now has a seat at the diplomatic top table, and the country is seen as a regional heavy-weight. But at the same time as Santos bestrides the globe pursing trade agreements with countries as diverse as Korea and Turkey, and promoting debate on the decriminalization of drugs, the average Colombian finds himself increasingly preoccupied by a health system in crisis, an apparent deterioration in the country’s security situation, and a cooling economy. For many Colombians their president is simply not responding to those issues that matter most to them.
So why does Santos have a problem appearing to understand the concerns of the nation?
Part of President Santos’ difficulty at home is precisely that which makes him a success on the world stage. Santos is an urbane and patrician politician. He is a poker-faced negotiator concerned by the technocratic details of good government rather than the touchy-feely politics necessary to win hearts and minds. This is perfect to strike deals with other heads-of-state, but useless come the time when votes must be won.
At first Santos’ style was the ideal antidote to the folksy and polemical ex-president Alvaro Uribe. Although Uribe was incredibly popular, Colombians were itching for a more diplomatic and conciliatory government. Two years on, however, and this appeal appears to have worn off. The polls suggest Colombians yearn for a president with more of a common touch, a man who understands their problems and who speaks their language.
To his credit, Santos recognizes that he is in trouble. At a recent cabinet meeting he told colleagues that the government needed to communicate better. Shortly afterwards, the president set off to tour the nation and sell the successes of his time in office. This tour has not been a disaster but it has not yet encouraged Colombians to fall back in love with their chief-executive. It is true that this strategy means Santos’ trips outside of Bogotá are not now to London, New York or Tokyo but instead to Medellin, Tolima and Cali, but this alone is not enough; Santos must also start to empathize with his countrymen. He must look and sound like he cares about finding solutions to the health system and that he is fighting the fire of the FARC with the fire of the state.
Santos’ other problem is that he has promised too much. Since coming to power the president’s legislative program has generated a whirlwind of new laws and constitutional reforms.
Santos is determined to create a legacy as the president who ended corruption, who secured peace, who restored land to those displaced by the 50-year conflict, who grew the economy by record levels, and who changed for good the world’s perception of Colombia. This breathless list of ambitious projects is laudable, but it is also unrealistic and unachievable in a four-year presidential term.
In El Tiempo’s poll, in perhaps what is the most telling statistic, 60% of Colombian feel that Santos has not “delivered.” Little surprise given the expectations he generated.
Amid this legislative hyperactivity Santos is struggling to establish a narrative for his government. The message is being drowned out by the string of announcements and the list of policies that fail to knit together into a coherent policy platform. Worse still, Santos’ diplomatic style means it is hard for Colombians instinctively to know what the president stands for.
All is not lost for Santos, he must remind Colombians why they fell in love with him in the first place – to do so he must become less diplomatic, speak more directly and appear to fight for the issues that concern voters. The first two years of Santos’ regime were all about reform, the second half of the mandate must be about delivery. The narrative for the 2014 elections needs to be established now – the campaign to become U.N. Secretary General can wait.
Also posted on Redes Colombia

This piece was published originally on Colombia Reports

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Colombian Conservatives place President Santos on notice

Senator Cepeda, Conservative Leader, photo, Semana

As the curtain raised on a new session of congress on Friday, Efraín Cepeda, the director of the Colombian Conservatives, warned of a ‘crisis’ in President Juan Manuel Santos’ National Unity coalition government.
The leader of the second largest parliamentary force was speaking after a special meeting of his troops where their presence in this coalition was confirmed, but where it was also conditioned on big change.
Cepeda is exploiting the first serious signs of weakness in the Santos regime; the president is desperate to restore relations with congress, and is starting to look over his shoulder as Alvaro Uribe’s political party takes shape. 
Many Conservatives are ideologically tied to Alvaro Uribe rather than President Santos and will be tempted, as we approach the pre-election cycle next year, to join his movement. For Santos the price of their continued support has risen significantly. 
The Conservatives’ march towards unity?
Efraín Cepeda was sworn in as president of the Conservatives at the end of last November taking over from José Darío Salázar. Salázar left the parted divided; those on the centre were left cold by the socially right-wing campaigns of 2011 (against gay-marriage and abortion). Andrés Pastrana, the last Conservative president (1998-2002), spent much of the year attacking the party for its policy direction and its supine attempts to weed out corruption within the collective. 
Although Cepeda arrived in parliament on the coat-tails of Pastrana, he has allies on both wings of the party and was seen as a unity candidate, bringing the Pastranistas and Uribistas together. His job of keeping his colleagues batting for the same team has been made more difficult, however, by the emergence of Alvaro Uribe’s Puro Centro Democrático. The stakes are now higher and should he fail, many Conservatives could jump ship. A further complication is that Former Defence Minister and leading Conservative (although also previously a member of the U) Marta Lucía Ramírez is even talked about as a possible Uribista presidential candidate. Under such circumstances the gravitation pull towards Uribe could become a force impossible for some to resist. 
To keep the Conservatives together, Cepeda must secure more goodies from the president. The parliamentary party will be less inclined to leave the coalition if they are tied in by grace and favour and if they feel their voice is heard more in the decision-making process.
Santos / congress relations a Conservative opportunity?

Congress feels scapegoated by the president. Santos only weeks ago forced his coalition partners to vote down the controversial Justice Reform bill days after he had whipped them to vote it through. Public anger at the legislation led to pillorying of parliamentarians; accused en masse of corruption and self-interest.

The parliamentarians’ resentment arises from the feeling that Santos pushed much of the blame onto them instead of accepting the government’s role in the fiasco – after all the government proposed the legislation, they argue. This discontent was evident as Interior Minister Federico Renjifo stood up to speak during the vote to ditch the JR bill – in an unprecedented reaction from congress toward a minister of state, Dr Renjifo was whistled at and boo-ed.

Reaction to JR bill led to a strategic rethink from Santos. At a special cabinet meeting to determine a way forward – called earlier this month – Santos told colleagues that he was focused more on public opinion than on securing harmonious relations with the law-makers. The Santos administration is, however a reforming government that needs the security or the ‘governability’ (the president confesses this is his favourite word) of the National Unity coalition. It is little surprise then that ahead of the start of the new parliamentary year (the third, and penultimate in Santos’ first mandate), diplomacy between the presidential palace and its legislative partners went into overdrive.

Efraín Cepeda is taking advantage of this situation. Under Salázar, the Conservatives were the opposition within the coalition. The party’s old boss is an arch-Uribista and was one of the first politicians to criticise Santos for departing from the ex-president’s Democractic Security doctrine.

When Cepeda took over efforts were made to repair the relationship. In February, the new leader was one of the first out of the blocks to defend the Santos regime when news emerged of the exiled Luis Carlos Restrepo’s attempted political coup to prevent the president’s re-election. The Conservatives were ‘proud to support the government’, Cepeda confirmed.

The cost of coalition politics

The Conservatives are calling in their chips, but how do they want Santos to pay? Effectively it comes down to do things – personnel and policy, and the Conservatives want Santos to show more leg on both.

Something the president needs to resolve quickly is Cepeda’s assertion that there are ‘useless ministers’ in the cabinet, a ‘crisis’ at the heart of the government. Cepeda has attacked the ministers for education and for health – both for their abilities and politics.  In doing this, Cepeda has announced that his Conservative party is moving to occupy this key social policy territory. He will want Santos to recognise this by moving Conservatives to these positions. 

This is smart politics. The tactic is to position the Conservatives not as the party of pro-life anti-gay hardliners but instead a modern political movement focused on removing the social barriers to success, to reducing poverty and to increasing opportunity.

It is also a move that understands where the public mood is starting to turn. The government has faced criticism for its education policies (particularly its university reform proposals which were shelved due to public protest), and its inability to resolve the health crisis which many highlight as political ticking time-bomb about to explode. Should Conservative ministers arrive in these positions and offer an alternative, a way out of the mess, then the party will be well positioned as the country moves into pre-election mode next year.

The Conservatives want high-profile ministers in high-profile roles and they want Santos to start to deliver Conservative policies. As senate spokesman Hernán Andrade warning Santos – the relationship must be ‘reciprocal’ between the party and the government.

This website has reported before on the disquiet within Conservative ranks (recorded early on in Santos’ regime) at the direction the government is heading. The feeling has been that Santos has been suspiciously minded towards Liberal Party policies – and indeed Liberal politicians. Under Salázar in particular, the Conservatives felt marginalised, an afterthought in the coalition. Cepeda’s move on Friday seeks to use the game-changing events of the Justice Reform bill to ensure that a more Conservative looking agenda is pursued by the Casa de Nariño. Cepeda has given the president a choice, he has told him to demonstrate that the Conservatives have a role to play or to expect their eventual opposition to his government. From the sidelines Uribe will attentively await Santos’ answer.

Also published on Redes Colombia

 

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President Santos’ fightback?

Santos´ image change, photo Cherie Elston

It is hard for a politician to admit failure or error. But President Juan Manuel Santos started this week by doing just that. ‘We got it wrong’ Santos told the nation, and ‘there will be corrections’.
Next month Santos celebrates two years in power. For the first year the president enjoyed record levels of public support, often in the 80%s. This honeymoon is now well and truly over, and following a series of difficult political decisions and on the back of a growing opposition from ex-President Alvaro Uribe, Santos has slowly been slipping in the polls. By last weekend, however, support for Santos had, for the first time, fallen below 50%. Santos is 15 points below Uribe’s worst ever poll rating.
How will Santos fightback? 
14 days to forget
The last fortnight has been catastrophic – not only for the president but for the whole political class. As reported on this website, the public indignation and the constitutional fiasco that surrounded the eventual shelving of the Justice Reform bill last week opened a chasm between the Santos administration and public opinion. 
A Gallup poll published last weekend, just days after the sinking of the Justice Reform bill showed support for Santos had plummeted 16 points. Santos is a politician canny enough to realise that the events of the last fortnight cannot alone account for the fall in support in his administration. For his fightback to be successful he must understand the deep-lying causes of public dissatisfaction, not only with his presidency, but also with the direction the country is heading. 
On Tuesday, Santos gave rare interviews in El Tiempo newspaper and also on the national television channel Caracol. In these interviews Santos established a mea culpa for the problems of the last few days and then set out his prospectus for regaining the support and admiration of the nation. 
On the same day Santos convened a special meeting of his cabinet both to set out his view of what had gone wrong and how to recapture the agenda. Santos’ plan was also to interrogate the analyses of his colleagues. What were their conclusions?
A communication problem?
The main conclusion of the cabinet meeting was that the Santos administration was not communicating well with the public. That both the ministers and Santos himself had not sufficiently articulated the successes of the government, and had allowed opposition voices – such as Uribe – too much oxygen. 
Santos in both the paper and television interviews emphasised this analysis. To hammer this home, he read out a long list of achievements that have not been, in his view, sufficiently well presented.
The president pointed to a reduction in crime figures, for example, and the 1.2 million Colombians lifted out of poverty between 2010 and 11. He went on to note the reduction to below 10% those registered as unemployed, the record levels of Foreign Direct Investment, and the run away levels of GDP growth over the last two years.
To those who criticise his government for letting the security situation deteriorate he pointed to the successful campaigns to take out the FARC’s number 1 and 2: He reminded the country that his government had dealt a greater number of blows to the terrorists than any of his predecessors. 
Santos concluded that the public was largely unaware or at least unconscious of this list of successes. Santos’ ministers must be more pro-active in taking to the airwaves to communicate their achievements, he argued. 
Is Santos’ conclusion correct? Virtually none of Santos’ cabinet are household names and very few appear on television regularly enough for them to be able to construct a narrative. The cold fact is that ex-President Alvaro Uribe is heard in public more often than all but Santos.
Santos himself is a good communicator, he is diplomatic and has much of the media on his side. However, he does not have the folksy charm of Alvaro Uribe. During Uribe’s eight years in power, Colombians had become used to wall-to-wall coverage of their president. Santos, by contrast governs differently – he has good media coverage, but his interviews are rare and his speeches are more technocratic than polemic. 
Santos’ fightback is dependent both on the communication skills of his ministers and his finding a way of connecting more closely with the public. 
A political problem? 
Santos recognises that the problems of his government are not all down to communication. He acknowledges that ‘governing’ – that the difficult decisions taken by politicians once in power – affects the popularity of all heads of state. 

In the two years in office President Santos has passed important legislation: The framework for peace law – which sets out the basis of transitional justice for demobalised guerrillas; and the land restitution law -which gives back land to those from whom it was stolen by the paramilitaries or the FARC, for example. Both laws are crucial for the future of the country, but there are elements within the political elite that are hostile to these reforms; they are fighting hard and dirty against them.

What are the other factors? For Jorge Londoňo, head of Gallup Colombia, there are three additional reasons for declining support for Santos: The first is the perceived worsening of public order and the associated increase in insecurity, the second is Colombia’s collapsing health system, and third, is the economy, which after years of sustained growth, is beginning to slow down.
The fightback
Santos has enjoyed until now an almost sublimely uncomplicated presidency. He has had 94% of the congress behind him, and the majority of the media have been on his side. 
Following the Justice Reform debacle relations with the congress are now strained, and public support has been in decline since October 2011. 

Meanwhile opposition is growing from those on the right – who support a return of Uribism.
We are half way through Santos’ mandate. We should expect things to get more political, and more dirty as we move closer to the elections of 2014. 
During the El Tiempo interview Santos talked about his friend former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Blair was famously buffeted by the fickleness of public opinion, but fought and won two re-election campaigns.
Santos’ powers of recovery should not be underestimated.
This article was also published on www.redescolombia.com