For two days, April 27 and 28, President Gustavo Petro and his cabinet will meet in a new conclave. There will be two days of hard work that will take place in Paipa, Boyacá. It is the third time that the president uses this figure to meet with his officials to discuss execution and budget issues.
The ministers and officials are going to go to the board to see how the goals for this year are going and what the fulfillment is. As on previous occasions, the president will present the concerns he has on some points and the issues to be refined. “He is going to give the line,” they pointed out.
The exercise is very similar to the one that took place at the end of 2023 at the School of Military Engineers in the Caldas Canton, in Bogotá. Initially for two days and then extended for a week, Gustavo Petro went one by one to his ministers so that they could report on what had been done during the year and how the next year was being planned in line with the national development plan.
They were tense days because some of the points presented were not to the liking of the president. There were cases in which ministers spent hours answering the President’s questions on specific topics.
This new meeting comes just when there are once again doubts regarding the execution in the current administration. Precisely this Monday, the Comptroller’s Office drew the government’s attention to the issue.
The issue of low execution in Gustavo Petro’s government has been a constant alert. Since mid-2023, the current administration has set off alarms in this area. So much so that it was proposed at one point that the ministers who did not give results in a period of one month were going to leave. The alerts were given in the middle of the year, in August after completing the first year in government and in December.
The warnings were not complied with and once again the issue of poor execution is raised as one of the central issues. On the other hand, next year’s budget will also be touched upon.
According to Colombian legislation, the budget for a year must have different stages. A first draft has already been delivered to Congress and the figures must continue to be adjusted so that at the beginning of the next legislature the project with the money for 2025 can be filed. This must be ready before mid-October.
And the marches?
After the large influx of dealers on this Sunday, it was proposed that this new conclave was going to serve to analyze the issue in depth. ““We are going to take advantage of a ministerial council that was prepared for the 2025 budget and we are going to hold a ministerial council where we will lock ourselves up for two days to carry out political reflection regarding the marches, it will not be the only issue, but we will take advantage of it,” said the Minister of the Interior, Luis Fernando Velasco.
However, beyond what was said by the person responsible for policy in the government, it seems that the issue will not be central and could even have only a brief mention in the conference. In fact, there has not been much time available by the president in the last week to talk about the issue.
Although the Minister of the Interior emphasized that the political council convened by the president on Monday was to mainly address the issue of the marches, others present assured that this was not the case. Supposedly, as EL TIEMPO was told, there was little time allocated to the marches “we didn’t stop at that.”
This is also how the day of the council of ministers would have played out. The president’s attention this Monday would be on execution aspects. “The center of the conversation was how to improve the government’s actions,” said one of those present who requested that his name be withheld.
