Colombia’s Democracy is Under Threat. Here’s Why the World Should Care

What do Gustavo Petro and Donald Trump have in common? On the surface, very little. Trump, a billionaire nationalist vs. Petro, a former guerrilla and self-identified “Derridaist”—(deconstructionist), would certainly clash in a debate.

Despite presiding over robust democracies, both the former U.S. president and current Colombian president are chipping away at their countries’ democratic institutions. Both have used what authors Daniel Treisman and Sergei Guriev call a “post-modern spin” to change narratives, utilizing insults and lies to discredit opponents.

Like Donald Trump, who recently predicted a “bloodbath” should he not win the 2024 election, Petro uses fear tactics to threaten opponents. Both have staged sieges on a government institution. Petro’s militias blockaded the Colombian Supreme Court to intimidate magistrates; Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power. Despite multiple witnesses to the blockade, photos and the testimonies of the magistrates, Petro denied that the entrance to the Palace of Justice was blocked (for more than 10 seconds), or that the judges were ever in danger. Both Trump and Petro maintain ties to anti-establishment militias.

But in a hypothetical race toward an authoritarian grip on power, Petro is two steps ahead. Petro recently announced his intention to convene a constituent assembly to rewrite Colombia’s constitution, despite such a brazen power grab being illegal in Colombia without congressional approval. He threatened revolution should his reforms not pass, assuring that the “resistance” is ready to fight. In the same statement, Petro affirmed his connection to the now infamous “front line.”

According to former Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano, the “primera linea” was paid to implement low-grade violence to discredit the centrist government of former President Iván Duque, during the 2021 “Paro Nacional,” he told Newsweek.

In a rapidly changing world where soft power can be garnered through targeted messaging, the outcome of Petro’s power grab matters. Democracies grappling with the threat of post-modern tech-savvy tyrants, like the U.S., should care about what happens to Colombia, for at least three reasons.

First, the imminent degradation of Colombia’s democracy will serve as a lesson on how enemies to liberal democracy are evolving their tactics. Diego Molano is concerned Petro’s allies have already infiltrated Colombia’s institutions. “I don’t see any good outcome. Colombia will most likely end up with a hybrid democracy, like Mexico, or Argentina. In the worst case, we could become like Venezuela,” he said. Venezuela, Colombia’s eastern neighbor is an economically battered dictatorship.

Hugo Chavez, the late Venezuelan dictator who transformed a democracy into a repressive and failed state also utilized a constituent assembly to stay in power.

Former Colombian President Duque weighed in on the comparison: “I have been saying for a while that there is a strategy by the president to stay in power and institutionally destabilize Colombia. Clearly, the government has initiated a repressive phase through different organizations and wants to lead the country to an institutional fracture.”

Petro’s obstinate insistence on his socialist health and pension “reforms” indicate that he, a staunch ally of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, is following a Chavez playbook. The reforms would involve a complex transfer of funds from the existing public-private systems to total government control. Colombia’s health system has already been classified by the World Health Organization as one of the best in the world, and Colombian experts agree the reforms would amount to a significant step backwards.

Second, there’s a lot at stake. In a geopolitically volatile region, where Russia-backed Venezuela harbors international terrorists and crime groups, Colombia is a major U.S. non-NATO ally and the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the hemisphere.

“Colombia is the keystone to our shared efforts to build a hemisphere that is prosperous, secure, and democratic,” President Biden said in March 2022, at a bilateral meeting with former Colombian President Duque. Plan Colombia, a Clinton-era initiative, is considered the greatest U.S. success story of U.S. engagement in Latin America and resulted in a significant decline in kidnappings and homicides between 2000 and 2016. Losing Colombia to a Venezuela-aligned regime would be a disastrous blow to security for the entire hemisphere.

But perhaps the most important factor would be the loss of life and safety of millions of Colombians should Gustavo Petro succeed in his plans to transform Colombia’s sophisticated institutions into his own petty cash register. Former Colombian Senator Vivianne Morales Hoyos detailed in her recent column with El Tiempo that a U.N. investigation found criminal control over rural areas has already increased significantly since 2021. She warned Petro is giving public resources to terrorists, supplanting “community representation with the militias of criminal groups.”

Until now the U.S. and international community have given Petro the benefit of the doubt. But it’s time to sound the alarm. With millions of lives at stake, in a potential Petro dictatorship, an ideological debate would be the last thing on anyone’s mind.

Kristina Foltz studies the effects of disinformation on democracy in South America. She writes about Colombian current affairs. Follow her @kristinafoltz1.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.