President Gustavo Petro‘s impulsive Twitter diplomacy was once again the cause of a bilateral crisis for Colombia, this time with the government of Chile. Less than two hours after the election of candidate José Antonio Kast, Petro called him a ‘Nazi’ and assured that he would never shake his hand. In response, the outgoing administration of President Boric – which has well understood the need to respect the protocols of democracy – sent a note of protest to the Colombian government.
Almost all the leaders of Latin America, including those of Mexico and Brazil, both recognized exponents of the left in the region, congratulated Kast’s election within the diplomatic protocols used when nearby countries organize votes. And in Chile, where democratic symbols have assumed an almost sacred role for governments since the return of democracy, the response of the defeated sectors was from an admirable respect for institutionality. Minutes after the results were known, the defeated leftist candidate, Jeannette Jara, visited the winner and publicly congratulated him. And despite the defeat of his favorite candidate, President Boric, also on the left, called Kast by phone in front of the entire country in a call that has become a democratic tradition every four years in Chile and the next day he received him at the Palacio de la Moneda to begin the transition process.
Meanwhile, Petro’s solitary decision was to attack the elected president with grievances and insults, which began the relationship between the two governments in the worst way. It is far from the first time that the president’s tweets have disqualified electoral processes in other countries, and these were added to his pronouncements against the governments of countries such as Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Spain and the United States. A notable absence among the long list of decisions questioned by the Colombian president: that of Venezuela in 2024. In the face of each out of character and protocol statement by Petro in the face of elections and political discussions in countries of all latitudes, we must ask again why he has not been able to clearly reject Nicolás Maduro‘s fraud in Venezuela.
The underlying concern that must be raised is how it benefits Colombia that the representative of the State decides to launch inflammatory speeches about the politics of countries in the region. In none of the previous cases have Petro’s words contributed to the solution of internal crises in neighboring countries or to the improvement of bilateral relations. The president knows that there are adequate and prudent channels to make clear the differences between two governments without affecting the relationship between two nations, but he has still preferred the path of public diplomacy of social networks. And this has only one explanation: the search for personal applause rather than making the right decisions for the benefit of an entire nation.
Petro understands perfectly well that he carries the complex responsibility of speaking on behalf of the entire country and not just in defense of its deepest biases. However, the growing radicalization and lack of restraint in their diplomatic pronouncements exceed the force of any call of duty. The president mistakenly believes that the immense power that his position offers him is at his disposal, in a personal capacity, to fight from there each of the fights that his biases and ideas dictate to him, even when that brings great risks for the country.
The president’s defenders applaud his determination to “call a spade a spade” even though he has fallen into the comfortable and misguided practice of calling anyone who dares to criticize him a ‘fascist’. But what is a fact is that the more the volume of Petro’s attacks increases, the more his silence and lack of forcefulness in the face of the most serious political crisis in the region, which has taken place a few kilometers from Colombian territory, also weighs. Any diplomatic adventure by President Petro will be overshadowed by his disturbing ambiguity when it comes to condemning with the same clarity the electoral fraud and abuses of power by Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
It is not a positive or hopeful scenario that the diplomacy of an entire nation is in the hands of a leader who is more concerned about applause, controversies and immediate reactions than the responsibility that comes with a position like his. Diplomacy is the search for precisely the opposite of this struggle of egos: it is the discipline of putting aside the ideological biases of rulers and prioritizing the interests of nations for the benefit of the long term.
