Aug 08,2022:Gustavo Petro, a former rebel fighter, has been sworn in as Colombia’s first left-wing president.
The former member of the M-19 armed group took his oath of office in Bogota’s Bolivar Plaza on Sunday afternoon, pledging to unite the polarised country in the fight against inequality and climate change, and achieve peace with rebel groups and crime gangs.
Petro, a 62-year-old former senator, has promised to revive scuppered peace negotiations with the National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels and to apply a 2016 peace deal to ex-members of the FARC fighters who reject it.
His foreign minister has said the government will hold dialogue with gangs and potentially give members reduced sentences in exchange for information about drug trafficking.
He also called for a new international strategy to fight drug trafficking, saying the United States-led war on drugs has failed.
Climate change must be fought internationally, but especially by countries which emit the most greenhouse gases, Petro added, saying Colombia would transition to an economy without coal or oil.
On the campaign trail, Petro said Colombia will stop granting new licenses for oil exploration and will ban fracking projects, even though the oil industry makes up almost 50 percent of the nation’s legal exports. He plans to finance social spending with a $10bn-a-year tax reform that would boost taxes on the rich and do away with corporate tax breaks.
Petro has also said a top priority is to fight hunger in the country of 50 million, where nearly half the population lives at some level of poverty. He has also pledged free public university education and healthcare changes, and constructed a broad congressional coalition of left-wing and centrist parties to pass his platform.
