President of Colombia claims he feels betrayed by his cabinet of ministers

Bogotá, June 18 (EFE).- Colombian President Gustavo Petro assured that he feels betrayed by his cabinet of ministers because they are not delivering the expected results and cited the department of Chocó (west), one of the poorest in Colombia, as an example of this situation. "Why do they have me in Chocó like this, abandoned, as if you were (former president Iván) Duque or the oligarchy's government? I can't stand a cabinet like this, betraying the president all the time, I can't go on like this," Petro said at a meeting of his cabinet of ministers that lasted until midnight on Tuesday. The president, who will have been in office for three years on August 7, has had more than 50 ministers in his cabinet and frequently criticizes them in public for the low level of execution. On this occasion, the president also criticized the Ministry of Transportation for considering investment in roads as social spending and assured that "technocrats dominate the ministers". "The Ministry of Transportation did everything against President Petro's government. A complete trap, that's why I removed the minister," he said, referring to the former head of that department, María Constanza García, who was in office for only six and a half months. Petro asserted that there are people who, in a "premeditated" manner, have placed in his team officials "who came with the mission of destroying the government program."

Ambassadors Without Requirements

In his speech, the president also asked Chancellor Laura Sarabia to eliminate the requirements for being an ambassador, mainly the requirement to know English or other languages. "Madam Chancellor, I said this two months ago, there should be no requirements for appointing ambassadors of Colombia, any child of a worker can be an ambassador; they don't like it, well this is the 'Government of Change'," he stated. According to Petro, "a worker's son can work harder in international relations than an ambassador who is going to scratch his belly, because he has an illustrious surname." The president expressed his displeasure because last Friday the Administrative Court of Cundinamarca annulled the appointment of Armando Benedetti as ambassador of Colombia to the FAO, a position that the politician held for only nine months and that he voluntarily left last November to return to the country. Benedetti is currently the Minister of the Interior. Petro said in the council of ministers that "they removed Benedetti because he doesn't know how to speak anything but Spanish" and added that it is one of the official languages of the FAO. "I asked the chancellor (...) to remove all the requirements to be an ambassador of Colombia because they are usurping or violating the constitutional norm (which says) that the president is the head of Colombia's international relations," regardless of "whether or not they know English," he expressed. EFE