Colombia, de la Espriella is sworn in from Cali: Bogotá tradition broken

Abelardo de la Espriella has been sworn in as the new president of Colombia, succeeding left-wing leader Gustavo Petro. The ceremony was not held in Bogotá, the traditional seat of Colombian presidential inaugurations for over two hundred years, but in Cali: a choice that breaks with a very long-standing institutional custom and that marks, together with the shift in political orientation compared to his predecessor, the most visible element of the day.

The break with tradition is not an isolated ceremonial detail. For over two centuries the inauguration of Colombian presidents has taken place in the capital; the decision to move the ceremony to Cali comes at the very moment when the country is moving from a left-wing to a right-wing leadership, and the two elements — location and political color — combine to define the character of the transition.

The ceremony was attended by King Felipe VI of Spain and the presidents of Argentina, Ecuador and Chile. The presence of heads of state and a foreign monarch places the event within a context of international attention, consistent with Colombia’s regional weight and with the interest sparked by the change of government following Petro’s tenure.

On the substantive front, de la Espriella used his inaugural speech to announce the guidelines of his economic program. He promised to cut public spending by up to 40 percent, a figure the new president indicated as a goal of his government without providing, in the available excerpts, an implementation timeline. He also promised to relaunch the oil and gas sector, presenting it as an economic priority of his term.

The reasoning behind the energy-sector choice was contained in a statement made by de la Espriella himself during the speech:

We cannot resign ourselves to having oil reserves that will last only a few years — Abelardo de la Espriella, president of Colombia

The quote condenses the central argument used by the new president to justify his focus on the hydrocarbons sector: concern over the depletion of existing reserves, a theme that in the speech was also linked to the decline of the country’s gas reserves.

The combination of spending cuts and an energy relaunch outlines a program aimed at rapidly affecting public finances and natural resource production, two levers that in the region’s recent history have often been the subject of political clashes between governments of different orientations. The fact that the inauguration ceremony brought together heads of state from countries with governments of differing political leanings — from Argentina to Chile, via Ecuador — nonetheless signals a level of diplomatic recognition that transcends the ideological affiliation of the new Colombian administration.

It remains to be seen, in the coming months, how the public spending cuts indicated by de la Espriella will translate into concrete measures and what impact they will have on the social policies inherited from the Petro government, on which the available dossier provides no details. For now, the one certainty is what the new president announced on the day of his inauguration: a target of cutting public spending by up to 40 percent and a declared intention to put the country’s oil and gas back at the center of the economic agenda.