Pistol on belt and walkie-talkie in hand, President Abelardo de la Espriella strides along with security forces on nighttime raids. Alleged criminals, paraded in handcuffs, are struck dumb.
Colombia’s new sheriff taunts them, then packs them off to jail with one of his signature lines: Bienvenido a la Patria Milagro—“Welcome to the Miracle Nation.”
Videos on the president’s social-media channels provide a gratifying show for Colombians tired of crime. Mr de la Espriella, a flamboyant rightwing populist who calls himself El Tigre, promised an iron fist and rip-roaring growth. Approaching 100 days in power, the Tiger has started on both.
Critical journalists have lost their jobs. Mr de la Espriella’s government entered office at a time of calamity. Mr de la Espriella and his ministers responded in a telegenic manner. Mr de la Espriella has a limited budget for security and other operations. Debt service will swallow almost a quarter of the budget. At the end of October the government unveiled a tough tax and spending reform. It would cut the number of goods eligible for special lower rates of VAT, broaden the income-tax base, cut the state payroll by a fifth and give the president powers to trim spending by decree. Fiscal conservatives were pleasantly surprised. But getting it passed will not be easy. Mr de la Espriella’s control of Congress is shaky. His party has only a handful of seats. There is a nominal pro-government majority, but Mr de la Espriella claims not to want to do the usual trading of jobs and resources for political support. His party, the largest in Congress, is wary of tax rises. Mr de la Espriella also shares Mr Trump’s thin skin. He fired the head of the statistics agency apparently for saying he found no evidence that Mr Petro’s government had fiddled labour-market figures. The boss of ANDI, the main business lobby, quit after Mr de la Espriella reportedly forbade ministers from meeting him.
Three days after his inauguration, an earthquake struck Colombia, killing more than 300 people and causing over $13bn of damage. Public debt is about 60% of GDP. Without action, the government projects a fiscal deficit of 9.4% of GDP in 2027. So difficult is the situation that his government is talking to the IMF about a loan programme, perhaps worth $20bn. Corporate tax rates would fall from 35% to 31%, while big new investors would get a rate of 20% (for 16 years).
They visited the affected areas and set up a “Miracle Fund” for reconstruction (which in fact has been slow to materialise). “It’s not what you expect from a populist,” says Mauricio Cárdenas, a former finance minister. Rafael Nieto, a senator from the right-wing Democratic Centre, says the government wants to impose bills, not debate them. José Manuel Restrepo, the vice-president, said Colombia could default if the bill isn’t passed. “Now we’ll really see the capacity of the president, beyond the spectacle,” says Mr Cárdenas. “There’s clearly a far-right authoritarian populist tendency,” says Mr Nieto, the senator. “But there’s still time to correct.”
But it will take more than TikTok videos to break the influence that armed groups who run drug-trafficking and illegal mining operations hold over swathes of the country—and certainly more to address Colombia’s fiscal crisis. Meanwhile Mr de la Espriella’s illiberal instincts have set him on a collision course with Congress and the courts. And the left-wing coalition that lost to him by less than 1% in the presidential run-off is encouraging his critics onto the streets.
So far Mr de la Espriella has shown little desire to compromise. In October he appointed as interior minister (responsible for managing Congress) Alejandro Ordóñez, an ultra-Catholic former attorney-general who burned books in his youth. Mr de la Espriella has arranged for dozens of works related to feminism, sexual diversity and Colombia’s peace processes to be removed from the National Museum. The gambit seems to be that a culture war will galvanise Mr de la Espriella’s base before regional elections in October next year, advancing his takeover of the right.
The choice fits the president’s call—alongside his tubthumping on security—for a “cultural counter-revolution” to restore traditional values. He signs off messages with “Long live Christ the King!”, despite court warnings about the state’s religious neutrality. “It creates soldiers for the cause,” says Luis Ernesto Gómez, a former interior vice-minister.
