The distance between the mayor of Bogota, Carlos Fernando Galan, and the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, is increasingly widening. The two leaders have maintained ongoing differences that appear to be intensifying with the twilight of Petro’s administration. Precisely in the context of the end of his government and the proximity of the presidential elections on May 31, the president is in conflict with different branches of public power and state institutions.
With barely three weeks left until that presidential election, the mayors of Colombia’s 32 capital cities expressed their concerns and requests to several of the presidential candidates. Andres Santamaria, Executive Director of Asocapitales, and Carlos Fernando Galan, president of that association, addressed the candidates during a forum that, however, was not attended by all those seeking the country’s highest office.
There are mayors who have not been able to speak with the president
The voice of these cities is important considering what they represent: they concentrate nearly half of Colombia’s total population, generate more than 52% of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and host 53.8% of Colombia’s economic units. This reality was at the center of the national conversation, with topics such as security and coexistence, infrastructure for development, and fiscal sustainability—three key pillars that are not campaign issues.
Amid these discussions, Mayor Galan raised new criticism of the national government’s relationship with the country’s capital city leaders, warning that even as Petro’s administration is nearing its end, there are mayors who have not even been able to sit down and speak with the head of state.
“In this government we have seen a tense, complex relationship. It must be said: some mayors of capital cities have told me that over the course of these two years and almost five months of his government at the local level, they have not had the opportunity to sit down and speak one-on-one with the president of the Republic to discuss the challenges of their capital city. That alone is already a demonstration of a lack of dialogue,” Galan complained.
“Cities in Colombia are different. What the institutional capacity of a city like Bogota, Medellin, Cali or Barranquilla represents may be different from other cities. Those other cities depend much more on joint work with the national government, and we have seen with concern that this lack of respect for local institutional frameworks is detrimental to the population of those cities,” the mayor stated.
Distant, difficult relationship between mayors and president
At the end of the forum, Mayor Galan clarified what he had said and was more forceful. “I spoke here as president of the board of Asocapitales. The Asocapitales assembly requested that an event like this be held, where we would invite all presidential candidates, because we are interested in knowing their vision of what they consider, if elected president, their relationship will be with capital cities and local institutions. More than a criticism of the president, it is about understanding how they see that relationship.”
“In this government [of President Petro] there is a distant, tense, difficult relationship with many capital cities,” added the capital’s mayor. “There has not been work that respects local institutional frameworks, local democracy, but rather they more or less relate to a local government only if there are mutual interests. If not, they abandon it. And that is not what the mayors of capital cities want.”
And regarding perhaps the most important policy of President Petro, that of “total peace,” Mayor Galan said first that it has not been worked on jointly with the local governments of Barranquilla, Medellin, Cali, or Bogota. He then became more categorical: “Some of us believe it is a failure and it must be ended. What we do ask is that any peace policy, whatever it may be, include as one of the actors to be heard the local authorities of the territories where there is violence.”