Ten months ago, Gustavo Petro was elected as the first openly left-wing president of modern Colombia. Since then, the situation in Colombia has been increasingly tumultuous as, initially, center and center-right parties tried to appease him by promoting parts of his agenda in exchange for positions in his cabinet. This strategy ultimately failed when they rejected his healthcare reform, and political scandals mounted. Most recently, the suicide of Colonel Óscar Dávila, a key figure in a political scandal has raised speculation about a possible political assassination.

At the start, many were optimistic about Petro’s presidency. In the beginning he displayed hitherto unseen negotiation skills, streamlining most of his agenda. However, slowly but surely, his coalition, which included the two most traditional parties of Colombia and the party of former president and Nobel Prize Award winner Juan Manuel Santos, began to falter.

In answer, he began flirting with authoritarianism and taking a hard turn to the left. Petro fired over half his cabinet, including key positions such as the ministers of Interior, Health, Finance, and Agriculture, and filled it with loyalists. In a May 1 speech commemorating Workers’ Day, he threatened to start a revolution if his agenda didn’t pass. He also told the Attorney General (who in Colombia is picked by the Supreme Court, not the president, and belongs to the judicial power) that he was the “head of state and, thus, his boss.”

Clearly, this is concerning. But to understand Petro’s rise to power and flirtation with authoritarianism, we must understand where he comes from, and how Colombia became enamored with Petro.

At 17, Petro became a member of the April 19 Movement (M19), an urban guerrilla group made up of mostly middle-to-high-class educated youth captivated by Marxism. M19 is best known in Colombia for the infamous attack on the Supreme Court in 1985, where twelve Supreme Court Justices were killed along with almost 100 other people—many in cold blood by the M19, others burnt in fires that ensued, and still others shot in the crossfire between M19 and Colombia’s Army and Police.

Petro, who was a councilman at the time, was not at the palace, but serving a prison sentence for illegally storing weapons. After M19 was disbanded in 1990, Petro advised the rewriting of the Colombian Constitution in 1991 and was elected as a congressman, which would kickstart a long political career that would include a diplomatic post in Belgium, an eight-year-period as a congressman, a four-year-period as a senator, four years as Mayor of Bogotá, and two failed presidential bids.

However, riding a wave of discontent that led to massive violent protests in 2021, Petro would be elected president in 2022.

For most of its contemporary history, Colombia had a bipartisan system of government. Save for the five-year dictatorship of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, Colombia was ruled by the Conservative Party or the Liberal Party from 1900 to 2002, until the presidency of Álvaro Uribe Vélez, who ended traditional bipartisanship. Uribe dealt a deathly blow to the guerrillas in the country, and became a kingmaker after his eight-year presidency: the next president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, was his defense minister (although he’d later break with Uribe), and his successor, Iván Duque, was Uribe’s candidate in 2018.

However, Uribe’s confrontational way of doing politics, which went so far as to arm civilians to face guerrillas, sowed division in the country. Santos’s controversial peace deal and the mediocre presidency of Duque, topped with the 2021 violent protests that almost ended his presidency, only made things worse and paved the way for an anti-system candidate. Many Colombians were tired of the traditional elites. And Petro, a man who had been involved in Colombian politics for 30 years denouncing corruption in the system and calling for a radical, left-wing revamping of the Colombian political system, rode the wave.

Petro narrowly defeated Rodolfo Hernández, another outsider candidate, in the 2022 election by 3%. His alliance only had 39 of 109 seats in the Senate, and 70 of 188 in the House of Representatives, hardly enough to turn Colombia into the socialist paradise he had in mind. Many thought that he’d suffer from the same constraints as Duque did four years earlier: without enough parliamentary support, his government would stall and be limited to a few executive decrees and speeches. It would be another mediocre four years for Colombia. After all, Petro made a living from confronting the traditional political class and calling out their corruption. He was a boxer, not a chess player.

What they didn’t expect was that Petro was audacious enough to play nice with the traditional parties: he offered positions in his cabinet to both the Conservative and Liberal parties, and to the Partido de la U (former president Santos’ party) and promised to moderate some of his position (for example, saying he would not try to make expropriation simpler). In exchange, these parties would fast-track his agenda. With their support, he had a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress, more than enough to enact his project.

At first, he was able to do so. He swiftly passed a tax reform, the law of “total peace” that establishes a new framework for negotiation with drug cartels and guerrillas in the country, and part of his agrarian reform to give lands to small farmers.

However, a contentious health reform showed that, in Petro’s eyes, working with his coalition was an insurmountable balancing act. It is the Colombia he has in his messianic head or nothing. The reform failed to get a vote in Congress in late April.

The richest man in Colombia, Luis Sarmiento, quickly moved to double his donations to the traditional Colombian parties, including those in the government coalition, which gave Petro all the more reason to claim the country’s elites were trying to make his project tumble. After this, Petro’s best-known face—the populist with authoritarian impulses—was shown for all to see.

“They are mocking the voters’ decision and that shouldn’t be,” Petro said in a press conference. “I think the government must declare itself in an emergency.”

After facing a single legislative hiccup, Petro’s threatened to create an emergency government that would give him more power. He drafted a National Development Plan that included measures to give the president extraordinary powers for environmental and online security affairs. However, the Plan approved in early May did not include such provisions.

Then, he asked all his cabinet to tender their resignation. In total, 12 of his 19 ministers have already been replaced in his first nine months, seven of which were after Petro’s tantrum, plus the chief of staff.

“The invitation to form a social pact for change [in Colombia] was rejected,” Petro announced on his Twitter account—a clear subtext directed towards the traditional parties that tried to appease Petro and moderate his agenda.

All the dismissed ministers are moderate members of his coalition, such as his finance minister, José Antonio Ocampo, a member of the Liberal Party. Enter leftist hardliners and some of his strongest supporters, who survived the revolving door of his tenure as Mayor of Bogotá (when over 50 people passed through his nine-member cabinet in four years).

Colombians have quickly grown fatigued by Petro. In just nine months, he went from being one of the most popular presidents in Latin America to having a 35% approval rate.

Even worse, the parties’ attempt to appease Petro and join him in government created a bigger problem: internal rebellion. Some members of the Conservative, Liberal, and U parties still wish to support Petro and enact his agenda. Petro is betting that he can succeed by negotiating individually with members of the three parties in Congress instead of dealing with the parties’ leadership. At this point, it might work.

He dismissed the embattled health minister Carolina Corcho, replacing her with a left-wing chameleon in Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo. Jaramillo served under Petro as his secretary of health in Bogotá, as did the new finance minister, Ricardo Bonilla. He also appointed Carlos Ramón González, a former guerrilla member and unyielding leftist, as chief of staff.

And then he went on the offensive. In a May 1 speech from the presidential balcony, he indicated a willingness to seize private property, saying, “The great revolution in progress requires a mobilized, organized, united, fighting working class, this government wants a profound, unbreakable alliance with the working people.”

“Land is for the one who works it,” he said. “It has a social function, an environmental function. The land is not for a group of feudal and slave owners’ heirs that keep it . . . and defend it killing poor people.” He added, “The government has to take the land.”

This is worrisome, but that was not the worst part. 

“It is not enough to win at the ballot box, social change implies a permanent struggle and the permanent struggle takes place with mobilized people, and at the head of that people must be the youth, the working people, the working class. The attempt to curtail the reforms could lead to a revolution,” he added in the speech, where he compared himself with Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan liberator of Colombia.

The threat of revolution didn’t go unheard.

Two days later, on May 3, 600 men of the so-called Guardia Indígena (Indigenous Guard) marched to the premises of the Colombian Congress dressed in black, with faces covered, and clubs in their hands, while Congress discussed Petro’s National Development Plan. Many local outlets considered this an unacceptable attempt to intimidate Congress into passing Petro’s reforms, and Guardia returned on Thursday, just as the plan was approved. 

But Petro didn’t stop there. On April 26 he shared a news report that said that a prosecutor, Daniel Hernández, hid information about murders perpetrated by the Cartel del Golfo, the most powerful drug cartel in Colombia. Attorney General Francisco Barbosa criticized Petro, saying he was putting Hernández and his family in harm’s way. Then, on May 5, he was asked about Barbosa and said, “he forgets I’m the head of state, and therefore his boss,” and then doubled down on his position on social media, claiming Barbosa had “disrespected” him as “head of state, representative of the Nation before the world and the people.”

In Colombia, the Supreme Court appoints the Attorney General, not the executive. It looked as though Petro was trying to meddle with another branch of public power—just a week after threatening the legislative branch. The Supreme Court immediately published a statement in which the president of the Court, Fernando Castillo, declared that the Attorney General had no hierarchical superior and that “disregarding or misunderstanding the foundations of our rule of law creates uncertainty, fragmentation, and institutional instability.” Meanwhile, Barbosa said in an interview that Petro was trying to end “the 1991 Constitution… by materializing his intention of being above the judicial branch of the public power,” and called him a “dictator” that is trying to “stage a coup on the judicial power.”

Now, Petro is facing the largest scandal of his administration, after in early June it was revealed that his former chief of staff, Laura Sarabia, went so far as to make the police tap her nanny’s cellphone after suspecting that she had stolen money from Sarabia’s house. Meanwhile, Petro’s former campaign manager and ambassador to Venezuela, the controversial Armando Benedetti, got mad that he never received a cabinet-level appointment, and revealed that Sarabia called him to help her bury the nanny’s story, which led to the start of an investigation by the country’s Attorney General. Benedetti, then, in a tell-all interview, talked about the possible involvement of cartels in the funding of Petro’s campaign, among other irregularities. 

Colonel Óscar Dávila was set to be interrogated by Colombia’s Attorney General regarding the unauthorized tapping, but he allegedly shot himself the day before the interrogation. This was an interview he had personally requested through his lawyer in a public letter. Many are suspecting foul play, because the first journalist that got to the scene reported that he saw two bullet holes.

Petro, again, answered by calling his supporters to the streets–and blaming a right-wing conspiracy for all the trouble. He also insisted that the Attorney General and media were to blame for the alleged suicide of Dávila.

Colombians have quickly grown fatigued by Petro. In just nine months, he went from being one of the most popular presidents in Latin America to having a 35% approval rate. Even in his relatively benign periods, petty scandals have dogged his presidency. His vice president, Francia Márquez, a Black environmental activist, has been criticized for using a government helicopter for private matters. His son, Nicolás Petro, was accused of having links with drug cartels, and Petro tried to sidestep the situation by claiming that “he had not raised him,” because Petro was in the guerrilla army while Nicolás was a child, so he could not be held accountable for Nicolás. This was unconvincing given that Petro was responsible for the launching of his son’s political career. His attempts to increase government participation in sectors of the economy, block oil contracts, tighten labor laws, and threaten private property will backfire sooner rather than later. And his legislative coalition has only grown smaller, and more radical, over the course of his time in office.

Petro has landed himself in big trouble. He chose confrontation and defied Colombian institutions, which have bravely but barely resisted through civil, drug, and guerrilla wars. How long can they survive a whimsical autocrat?