Political action must offer collectively desirable futures. Retrospectively, however, many future projects are like lottery tickets that have already been played: records of unfulfilled illusions. The case of Petro’s government is no exception—but that doesn’t mean everything remains the same in Colombia. Change came and didn’t come.

In some respects, the “government of change” has, in reality, remained stationary. This is the case, to begin with, regarding corruption. From campaign financing to suspicions of gifts offered to congress members in exchange for approving reforms, and including the various scandals involving the president’s son, the administration has been embroiled in numerous controversies. In Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index, Colombia dropped several positions, although it still ranks similarly to Brazil or Argentina, and at levels consistent with those seen under President Duque during most of his term.

On matters of peace and security, and despite a shift in strategy, the government’s results are just as poor as its predecessor’s. The opposition’s narrative—that Petro’s arrival has brought the country to the brink of collapse in terms of security—is unsustainable. Red zones like Catatumbo have a long and complex history, and the Gulf Clan wasn’t invented yesterday. Nonetheless, the “Total Peace” policy is unlikely to be more than a grandiose slogan, with tangible results limited to a few local successes—such as the demobilization of one ELN dissidence group in Nariño and a temporary truce among the main gangs in Buenaventura. The protection of social leaders has not substantially improved (174 assassinations in 2024), the homicide rate, though slightly reduced, remains very high (25.4 per 100,000), crimes such as extortion have increased (18% rise between 2023 and 2024), and by April 2025, 21 police officers had been killed—four times more than during the same period the previous year.

At the macroeconomic level, this government has not been the disaster predicted by the opposition, but broadly speaking, it also fits within the country’s stationary movement. President Petro has boasted, for example, about inflation rates (5%) and the unemployment rate (8.2%). However, inflation control is partly the result of measures taken by the Central Bank, and although Petro inherited the highest inflation in 23 years (13.1%), the average inflation rate during the Uribe, Santos, and Duque administrations was 4.88%.

Petro’s unemployment figures are positive, but for much of Santos’s second term they were similarly favorable. Multidimensional poverty has continued its uninterrupted 14-year decline and, nationally, stands at 11.5% for 2024 (0.6% lower than the previous year). Economic growth under Petro has been rather modest (1.7% in 2024). Under Duque, average annual growth was 3%, and both previous administrations had higher averages. Growth expectations for 2025 don’t exceed 3%. In short, there’s been neither collapse nor spectacular takeoff.

A constant, inertial movement is not change. So where is the change, then? In terms of public policy and governance practices, first, there has been a rethinking of the executive’s relationship with big business and the military leadership. Colombian capitalism has not mostly been built by heroic, Schumpeterian entrepreneurs who innovate and take risks, but rather by a kind of “crony capitalism” based on reciprocal favors between economic and political elites—and, as shown emblematicly in the Odebrecht case, their capacity to cover for one another. Petro’s bitter relationship with Sarmiento Angulo is part of this. That Petro is branded by the opposition as an “enemy of business” and labeled a “communist” is a natural reaction to a disruption in the usual dynamics between the presidency and large corporate conglomerates.

The same can be said, secondly, about criticisms regarding the alleged weakening and “demoralization” of the Armed Forces. As proven by the initial appointment of Iván Velásquez as Minister of Defense, Petro has emphasized the need to reject the criminalization of social protest and human rights violations that, for decades, were legitimized by the counterinsurgency discourse of the “internal enemy.” The purging of generals has been part of this aim. Opposition marches have been aggressive, but there hasn’t been a hint of police brutality. The contrast—especially with the right-wing governments of Uribe and Duque, marked by extrajudicial executions and repression of the Social Uprising—could not be more stark. Naturally, the right links Petro’s civilian approach with poor security outcomes. Duque, however, is his opposite, and the results were no better.

Thirdly, Petro has pursued an ambitious social policy, and as the failed health reform illustrates—derailed by the convergence of pharmaceutical managers, traditional politicians, and health service providers—he has shown a willingness to challenge powerful groups. This framework also includes the pension reform approved in Congress, which will benefit 2.8 million elderly Colombians. Likewise, there has been a strengthening of rural communities through the creation of 13 new peasant reserve zones and the acquisition and formalization of land at volumes far surpassing those of the previous two governments. In the same vein, there’s the labor reform (blocked in Congress), which will be submitted to a public referendum. The reform aims to restore workers’ rights eroded over the past 20 years and coincides with a historic 9.5% increase in the minimum wage. Also worth mentioning are the development of 300 energy communities and the guarantee of free higher education in public institutions. Seniors, rural workers, formal laborers, ethnic communities, and youth are the direct beneficiaries of these policies—groups that have not typically been at the center of recent Colombian governments.

Beyond concrete practices or policies, however, the greatest transformation brought by the “Government of Change” is cognitive openness. Petro has sparked controversies that have de-naturalized hegemonic ideas. The virulent reactions against him are partly due to his break from the establishment’s common sense on many issues—that is, he has turned into public problems, requiring justification and debate, what was previously accepted as obvious, generalized consensus. It has been a pleasure to see politicians and journalists forced to react to discussions on “degrowth,” the “energy transition,” or the “extractivist model”; compelled to justify the mantra that better labor conditions mean higher unemployment; to reflect on whether illegal crops are effectively fought with glyphosate spraying; or to ask, in disbelief, whether habitual submission to the United States is truly desirable, or whether a “pragmatic” foreign policy allows one to speak, with Petro’s moral clarity, about the genocide in Gaza.

Not everything the president has said on these topics has been accurate, of course, but the point is how the generation of these debates contributes to the development of a more plural, reflective, and democratic political culture in Colombia. The impact of a government cannot be measured solely in terms of institutional performance, but also in terms of changes in the mental habits of professional politicians, public officials, and citizens. In that sense—more than in any other—the Government of Change has indeed lived up to its name.

_{*Machine translation proofread by Janaína da Silva.}