Diego Guevara is the new Minister of Finance of Colombia. The president Gustavo Petror presented it with honors. Guevara, he said, is aware of the difficulties of the left-wing government and the struggles it is engaging in so that “we are not drowned by the capital funds of the internal or external public debt” or “high interest rates.” Arrive to complete the task of Ricardo Bonilla of reducing the fiscal deficit that, Petro maintains, has been inherited from the previous management of Iván Duque.
The president had no alternative but to get rid of Bonilla to prevent the spread of a political and judicial storm that he considers malicious. Before asking him to step aside, he highlighted his status as a “great colleague and honest professor” who, at the head of the Treasury, “brought Colombia out of recession.” Bonilla had to leave through the back door of the ministry. “Not because I believe he is guilty, but because they want to tear him to pieces for being loyal to the government program and they want to tear him down unconstitutionally,” Petro explained through X.
Bonilla was in charge of carrying out a new State financing law. Your effort was marred by allegations of handouts granted to a group of congressmen in exchange for voting favorably on Executive initiatives. As soon as he resigned, Bonilla rejected accusations of a scandal in the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD). “I leave with my head held high.”
According to the portal ‘La Silla Vaca’, Bonilla “knew” that several contracts “were directed” to mayors and officials who had been selected by the parliamentarians, “from whom the minister urgently needed their vote in the Public Credit Commission “. Now “the Prosecutor’s Office must take charge of the investigation.”
The former head of the Treasury assured in this regard that the step aside will allow him to defend himself against accusations that he considers unfounded “devoid of my status as a public official.”
Difficulties
For Petro, the Bonilla case is not unrelated to a crisis in the State’s finances, which forced a 5.6% cut in expenses and at the same time exposed the problems in strengthening next year’s budget. The only way to clean up public finances was the creation of new taxes and that initiative was not accepted in a Congress where the ruling party does not have a guaranteed majority. This situation of latent fragility has caused the shipwreck of one of Petro’s emblematic projects, the change of the health system.
Bonilla’s departure is also observed as a consequence of internal problems in the Government. The Colombian ambassador to the United Kingdom, Roy Barreras, supported this interpretation with his statements in X. “Let hate not blind anyone. Colombia is one. Conspiring destroys. Dialogue builds. Calm, tranquility, think with a cool head,” he asked. According to ‘Semana’ magazine, it was a message to “his colleagues in the executive.” Barreras asked to stop the “self-destruction” since “attacking each other destroys not a Government, but a political project, a promise of a just and peaceful country.”
