Gustavo Petro on Sunday became Colombia’s first leftist president, pledging to unite the polarized country in the fight against inequality and climate change, and achieve peace with leftist rebels and crime gangs.
Petro, a former member of the M-19 guerrilla group, was sworn in by Colombian Senate President Roy Barreras in Bogota’s Bolivar Plaza on Sunday afternoon, watched by about 100,000 invitees including Spanish King Felipe VI, at least nine Latin American presidents and other Colombians invited by Petro.
“I do not want two countries, just as I do not want two societies. I want a strong, just and united Colombia,” an emotional Petro said in his inauguration speech. “The challenges and tests that we have as a nation demand a period of unity and basic consensus.”
Petro has promised to revive scuppered peace negotiations with the National Liberation Army rebels and apply a 2016 peace deal to former members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia who reject it.
His foreign minister has said the government would hold dialogue with gangs and potentially give members reduced sentences in exchange for information about drug trafficking.
Armed groups should accept that deal, Petro said.
“We call on all those who are armed to leave their arms in the haze of the past. To accept legal benefits in exchange for peace, in exchange for the definitive non-repetition of violence,” Petro told the cheering crowd.
He also called for a new international strategy to fight drug trafficking, saying the US-led “war on drugs” has failed.
“It is time for a new international convention that accepts that the war on drugs has failed, that it has left a million dead Latin Americans during 40 years and that it leaves 70,000 North Americans dead by overdose each year. The war on drugs strengthened mafias and weakened states,” he said.
Climate change must be fought internationally, but especially by countries which emit the most greenhouse gases, Petro said, adding that Colombia would transition to an economy without coal or oil.
A US$5.8 billion tax reform, which would raise duties on high earners to fund social programs, was to be proposed to Congress yesterday by Colombian Minister of Finance Jose Antonio Ocampo.
Petro, a 62-year-old former senator, has also said a top priority is to fight hunger in the country of 50 million.
Petro has also pledged free public university education and healthcare changes, and constructed a broad congressional coalition of leftist and centrist parties to pass his platform.
Promises of pension reform and a halt to new oil development have caused investor jitters despite the appointment of Ocampo, a long-time official.
Colombian Vice President Francia Marquez, an environmental advocate and former housekeeper, is the first Afro-Colombian woman to hold the post.
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