The Government was ready to clarify that its decision is not an act of anti-Semitism. But one wonders what Petro gains by receiving congratulations for such a decision from a terrorist group like Hamas. And what do Colombians gain? And if it is not an anti-Semitic act, why not also break with Russia, which has invaded Ukraine and is massacring the Ukrainian people. To give just one example of the many infamies that you can find around the world to be outraged.
These days, I have taken a look, after reading at the time, Alejandro Gaviria’s book The Controlled Explosion, searching in those reflections of Petro’s first and fleeting Minister of Education for some allusion to his government’s relations with the world. , and there is not the slightest hint of it in those chronicles of chaotic councils of ministers. Very logical thing in a country whose centuries-old tradition is navel-gazing.
In any case, rereading Gaviria’s little book is a useful exercise from time to time. Especially if one is naive enough to be amazed by Gustavo Petro’s things. There are delicious and very illustrative phrases of what can happen inside one of the craziest governments on the American continent. “The State, almost needless to say, is not good at organizing sancochos,” writes the former minister, recounting the president’s obsession with a community pots program.
“There was a political interest and a symbolic, theatrical fascination… (in launching those popular pitanzas) But microeconomics was a nightmare.” At the same time, his closest collaborators, with more important matters to carry out, attended this storm of culinary ideas, resigned or perplexed.
One reads the chronicles of those councils of ministers and Gustavo Petro’s inability to manage the country does not seem strange to him. The pathetic thing is that Petro believes he is fulfilling a historic mission and that, despite the high opinion he has of himself and despite his verbal incontinence, so Latin American and old-fashioned, the position is too big for him.
In one of those microeconomics sessions like the ones Gaviria describes, he must have felt the need to break with Israel. Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo has said that “it was a very thoughtful decision”… Yes, surely; like everything about Petro. The world is not transformed by building walls and closing doors.