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Ask yourself this question. How many faces of Juan Manuel Santos´ cabinet do you recognize? Be honest. One, maybe? Two, perhaps? I´m guessing even the hardiest of politicos would struggle to name more than three or four.

With the exception of the Vice President Angelino Garzón, the Defence Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón, and housing minister Vargas Lleras, the government´s top team is largely anonymous. This is bad for democracy, bad for the government, and potentially life threatening for Santos´ re-election hopes.

Last August JMS shook up his team.  He was responding to a dramatic fall in public confidence in him following the Justice Reform bill debacle.  That reshuffle, however, has had very little positive effect in terms of public opinion. The current crop of ministers might be good bureaucrats, they might even be decent law makes, but politics is also about message, about communication and leadership. And in this area they are falling dramatically short.

We know that Santos is acutely conscious that his government is failing to communicate. So why does he stick with a team that appears camera shy? Mr President, how often do your ministers take to the airwaves either to make or defend their case?

When was the last time we heard your transport minister speak, for example? Infrastructure is one of Colombia´s most pressing concerns, yet I can´t remember a time when Cecilia Álvarez (no, I can´t picture her face either) appeared on TV or radio to tell us what she´s doing about it.

What too of your health minister Alejandro Gaviria, of whom we all had high hopes? Sure, he appeared on television once or twice last month to announce his new reform but has since appeared to scuttle back to the corridors of power.

And your interior minister, or your justice minister, do we know anything of them? Who has come out to promise change in the appalling conditions in our prisons? Where are the announcements on measures to curb the corruption that´s putting a huge break on the nation´s economic development and scaring off inward investment?

The time has come Mr President for you to bring out the knives.

Santos needs a new cabinet of real politicians – not bureaucrats. He needs campaigners; people who will defend and fight for the government. All successful governments rely on “hard nuts”, “bruisers”, “heavy weights” to retaliate and lay some punches on the opposition.

At the moment the opposition is having all the fun. Uribe and Robledo on the right and the left respectively are running rings around the government. And if the campaign is already nasty, it´s going to get a lot worse once the Uribistas have chosen a candidate for the 2014 fight.

Santos cannot afford to stick with the political deadwood if he wants to be re-elected.

The problem with the cabinet is not just that it is full of – in the eyes of the public – nobodies. It is also far too Bogotano. The President needs urgently to find some regional faces.

Senator Amando Benedetti has called this the “Country club” cabinet in which the ministers “speak more English than Spanish”. For critics, Santos has surrounded himself with his mates, with a Bogotá-centric-strato-25 elite that has more in common with we Europeans and North Americans than with a family from Pasto, Popayán or Putumayo, Montería, Manizales or Mitú.

So If Santos´ team is seen as being out of touch with the nation, how can it hope to fight for votes? Especially so when you consider that Uribe´s real strength is in the countryside, across the regions. He could hoover up support here while Santos retreats to his urban, liberal base.

This, Santos´ third year in office, is supposed to be one of results. Traditionally the legislature is slow as politicians start to return to their bases to whip up support for the forthcoming election fight. So now more than ever Santos needs a group of politicians – a team – ready and able to go out and sell the government´s achievements.  He doesn´t need law makers, he needs communicators.

If Santos were a caudillo his cabinet wouldn´t matter. If Santos were even an Obama, or a Clinton, or a Blair perhaps it wouldn´t matter, either. But for all his qualities, Santos is not a politician for the media age.

If Santos´ advisers can´t see that the very worst thing for this president is to force him to struggle on with a cabinet that has zero public profile then they should be sacked. He needs help, and fast.

It´s premature to suggest the Santos Presidency is in danger of going out with a whimper; after all he still holds most of the bureaucratic cards. But unless changes are made to the top table, the ride will be unnecessarily bumpy and journey´s end unnecessarily difficult to predict.

This article was commissioned by The City Paper.

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