Colombian President Gustavo Petro (Getty)

With deep fears of the machinations of the right that lie in wait for his mistakes before his mistakes, Colombian President Gustavo Petro has in recent days intensified his calls for his supporters to demonstrate in the streets, in order to defend the government they voted for in the summer of 2022, and to stand up to the conspiracies being hatched against it, judicially and in the media, to abort it before The end of its legal period in 2026.

The president described it - frankly - as a soft coup, especially with the appointment of a new public prosecutor this week, obstructing the election of one of the names proposed by him, and keeping the arms of the right in their places.

Left-wing president

Although President Petro's opponents agree to "dilute" the term "soft coup" and accuse the man of exaggeration, the facts on the ground give him legitimacy to use the phrase, whether with regard to the details of his framework, his government, and even his family, or to the details of the general political scene in Colombia.

President Petro is the first left-wing president, who assumed office in August 2022, after the unparalleled dominance of the right, which lasted 200 continuous years. The late leader Chavez once described Colombia as “the Israel of Latin America.” Given that it is the strongest ally in the region, of Israel and the United States, which certainly explains the huge size of its media machine, and the power of its right-wing rhetoric in shaping public opinion according to what Washington wants.

It is funny that right-wing figures underestimated President Petro’s warning that he was being subjected to a soft coup that sought to harm him, saying: Colombia, unlike all countries in the region, has never witnessed a coup, since the beginning of its democratic experience, which provoked his supporters to respond that Colombia had not witnessed a coup, under the rule of the right, because the American administration did not need that!

Frantic media campaigns

On the other hand, President Petro's mention of a soft coup could gain credibility if we look at the recent past of the man's history, as when he was mayor of the capital, Bogota, from 2012 to 2015, he was subjected to the Public Prosecution's decision to remove him from the position. Due to a disagreement over the management of the waste file, a ruling was issued depriving him of his political rights for a period of 15 years.

But he sought help from the international judiciary and the Supreme Court and regained his position, revealing that the decision to dismiss him was arbitrary and aimed at excluding him from any electoral race, until he won the presidency of the country in 2022, and the nightmare of his popularity continued, perched on the chest of his opponents.

In addition, over the eighteen months of his rule, President Petro has been living under a hot plate of media campaigns that seek to damage his image, his performance, and even his allies and family members.

As for the most exhausting confrontation, it is confronting the work of the Public Prosecutor and the Public Prosecutor, who represent a barrier to President Petro’s dream of appointing names from outside the right to head these two institutions.

Media and judicial campaigns were launched by accusing President Petro of obtaining funds from drug gangs for his presidential election campaign, then moving on to accusing his son of illegal gain and trying to pin the blame on his father. However, President Petro called on the judiciary to hold his son accountable fairly, and did not intervene even after the rulings were issued. on him.

Suspicious financial sources

After that, accusations were made against the president's wife of extravagance and misuse of public funds, and this campaign included some systematic attacks on his wife and daughters in public places, and this was presented in the media, extensively, as messages from the people of their disliking of the ruling family.

In the middle of last year, the campaigns moved to a public opinion issue that generated a lot of ink, related to the publication of leaks by the President’s Chief of Staff, Laura Sarabia, and the former Colombian Ambassador to Venezuela, Armando Benedetti, about a dispute over sums of money, of “suspicious origin,” which the Public Prosecutor hastily seized and inserted into them. The president's name is as usual, but President Pietro once again proved that he had nothing to do with the personal dispute between Sarabia and Benedetti.

At the end of last year, the opposition in Parliament was able to question Foreign Minister Albaro Liepa, who is very close to President Petro, and force him to suspend his duties for three months, as punishment for his management of the passport file.

Since 2007, the Colombian Foreign Ministry has been awarding a million-dollar tender to the Thomas Gragg company, which specializes in preparing and printing passports, but the sanctioned minister decided to refuse to award the tender to the same company. Because of her candidacy alone, without a competitor, with the justification that this does not meet the integrity of the tender conditions, in addition to the fact that President Petro explicitly said: “Manipulating the tender envelopes to determine the winner in advance is pure corruption!”, indicating that there is a network within the ministry working on that.

Demonization and depletion

What is questionable is that, while the Minister of Foreign Affairs is being punished, the company won the same tender last week! No judicial body rose up to denounce this, led by the Public Prosecutor!

As for the latest “conspiracies” that President Petro considered a true embodiment of the soft coup against him, it was the demonization of the three nominations that he proposed, with the blessing of the Supreme Court, to succeed the outgoing Attorney General, the right-wing Francisco Barbosa.

On the other hand, there are clear indications of procrastination in deciding the nominations, in order to be content with having Marta Mancera, Deputy Public Prosecutor Barbosa, temporarily assume his position, until the end of Petro’s presidential term, which is a legally acceptable scenario in light of the inability to reach consensus on the president’s nominees!

This is what President Petro said was an artificial “blockage” by the right, to monopolize the judiciary, with the aim of harnessing it to wage a judicial war against him in what is known in English as “lawfare”, and to liquidate him either before the end of his term, or to issue criminal rulings against him later, in a way that prevents his return to political life in the future. As happened with Brazilian President Lula da Silva, former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, and many from the social left movement in the region.

At a time when the symbols of the Colombian right downplay President Petro's accusations that the judiciary is working to overthrow him sooner or later and turn the page on his return to the scene, relying on the superior capabilities of the media machine to exhaust and demonize him in the eyes of Colombians, President Petro refuses to be the Pedro Castillo of Colombia.

In reference to the former President of Peru, against whom the judiciary, legislative, and media arsenals gathered, dismissed him two years ago, and threw him into prison on charges of attempting a coup against Parliament, which he had never been on side with.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.