Relations between President Gustavo Petro and many retired civil servants are at their worst since the government took office in August last year. “Why are they plotting a coup? Because they are afraid that we will end impunity,” the Colombian president wrote on his Twitter account this Thursday after sharing an interview with retired Colonel John Marulanda on W Radio. In it, the former director of the Association of Retired Officers of the Colombian Armed Forces (Acore), referring to the political crisis in Peru, said that “the reserves there managed to overthrow a corrupt president”. He was referring to former leftist President Pedro Castillo, who failed in his coup attempt last year and whom Petro has defended on several occasions. “Here we will try to do our best to expel a man who was a guerrilla,” Marulanda added. With that last sentence he set off all the alarm bells.
Ever since Petro came to power last year, there have been fears that the military will not accept a four-year government in the hands of a former guerrilla fighter, a first in the country. So far they have accepted it. Colombia consistently boasts of being the continent’s most stable democracy alongside the United States, and hasn’t seen a coup in decades (counting the brief dictatorship of General Rojas Pinilla in 1953). During the government of former Liberal President Ernesto Samper (1994-1998), there was repeated talk of saber-rattling, but it never happened. Petro, in turn, has managed to maintain friendly relations with the active armed forces throughout the ten months of his reign, even after appointing renowned anti-corruption investigator Iván Velásquez as defense minister. But his relationship with the retired armed forces was far less smooth.
Following Marulanda’s statements, Petro warned of a possible coup on Twitter, although the statement was not made by anyone active in the Colombian armed forces. His chief of staff in the presidential office, Laura Sarabia, also condemned the statements in which she made it clear that the democratic character of public authority should not be called into question. “Disagreeing with the government is very different from instigating a coup. And when someone on reserve makes that call, not only is it annoying, it’s a disgrace to the uniform he once wore. “The democratic tradition of our armed forces should NEVER be questioned,” she said on her Twitter account.
However, as reported by W Radio, Marulanda later backed down. “I’ll correct what was said. It’s not about defending President Gustavo Petro how Peruvian President Pedro Castillo was impeached,” he clarified. Correction that came too late. The fire was already lit.
The interview with Marulanda came after hundreds of retired military personnel demonstrated in Plaza de Bolívar on Wednesday. There they shouted “Get out, Petro!” several times and carried banners proclaiming “progressive contempt” for the security forces. With such demonstrations, the question always arises to what extent the political positions against the president correspond with the active forces or not. The latter are not legally allowed to take part in political demonstrations, parties or votes, but pensioners are. And since the government of former President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), pensioners have been great allies of uribismo, petrismo’s biggest critics.
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