Gustavo Petro’s decision to appoint Daniel Quintero as Superintendent of Health sent chills down the spines of some of his most loyal allies. They tried to convince him until the last minute that choosing the former mayor of Medellín, who faces a corruption trial, was a terrible decision that would come at a high political cost. The president remained firm. The allies have opted for silence, with the notable exception of the director of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD), Carlos Carrillo. Once again, the former Bogotá councilor and staunch leftist has made his criticisms public: “It is a huge mistake and my moral duty is to warn about it. True loyalty to the president consists of speaking honestly and telling him what many prefer to keep silent about.”
The director of the UNGRD has accused the former mayor of Medellín of being an infiltrator in petrismo. “Pragmatism and the strategy of political struggle led many Latin American leaders to accept regional or guild powers in their processes that outwardly embrace ideas of social justice and change, but deep down seek nothing other than to maintain the plundering,” he commented this Thursday on X. Quintero, unlike Carrillo, was not formed in the left. He went through several parties before becoming mayor in 2020 as an independent. He began to approach Petro as the 2022 elections approached. A few days before the vote, he posted a video in which he was seen in a car recommending “first gear change,” echoing the slogan of the then leftist candidate. This earned him a six-month suspension for political participation.
“The role assigned to Daniel Quintero makes us regress as a political project, harms the Government, and fuels the opposition,” Carrillo emphasized. The former mayor of Medellín has countless corruption complaints. The most advanced case is Aguas Vivas, in which the Prosecutor’s Office has called him to trial for inflating the price of a lot to illegally benefit the owners. He claims it is “a setup.” The director of the UNGRD has taken up the case: “He has the right to his defense, but the Historic Pact does not have to bear the political cost of his legal troubles. We owe him nothing and he contributes nothing to us.”
Carrillo has been known for denouncing corruption among officials of the Government to which he belongs. “We got elected with a banner of change and said we were different, but we were not,” he told this newspaper in May 2024, a few weeks after arriving at the UNGRD, an entity riddled with corruption. At the end of last year, he accused the Minister of the Interior, Armando Benedetti, and the then director of the powerful Administrative Department of the Presidency of the Republic (DAPRE), Angie Rodríguez, of turning a fund dedicated to climate disasters into “a political stronghold” to distribute positions. This Monday, he insisted that the best thing is to maintain a critical stance. “Most political leaders of the Pact today will remain silent to avoid the wear of contradicting the president, but real respect is taking care of those we admire, even from their mistakes.”
Other few personalities in petrismo also expressed themselves. One of them was José Luis Marín, councilor of Medellín for the official Historic Pact. “The president is wrong in appointing Daniel Quintero as Superintendent of Health,” he declared in a brief message on X. There were also criticisms from activists with resonance on social networks. “The only explanation is that Quintero is Petro’s unacknowledged son,” commented Hanwen Zhang, a survey expert. More emphatic was documentary filmmaker Daniel Mendoza Leal, known as Matarife: “Mr. President, this is the first time I publicly question one of your decisions and I do it because I do know who this thieving and corrupt rat you are appointing is. This crook stole Medellín and sold the city to his political interests.”
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Quintero only responded to Carrillo. “Carlos, for slander we already have Fico, Abelardo, and Uribe [right-wing politicians]. For months you deceived the country saying I had something to do with the UNGRD. Uribismo and the traditional media celebrated your words, the media did specials with you, Fico retweeted you, and the right applauded you. Everything turned out to be false,” he wrote on X. Later, he claimed that the director of the UNGRD is the corrupt one, in line with the tactic Rodríguez used a few months ago. “You appointed Iván Name’s nephew, who allegedly received 3 billion in bribes, as second in command of the UNGRD,” the former mayor asserted. “There are dirty and dark things under that beard,” he added.
Criticism of Quintero is not new on the left. Former minister Susana Muhamad and senator María José Pizarro have questioned him for his style, which they consider populist and histrionic, and have accused him of instrumentalizing leftist causes. One of the most evident moments of discomfort was last August, when Quintero burst into a business congress and jumped on stage with a Palestinian flag. “With the pain and helplessness of a genocide that cannot be stopped, I ask that no one exploit the pain of the Palestinian people for electoral gain,” Muhamad declared.
Criticism from other sectors
Outside petrismo, criticisms abound. “It is not ‘a mistake’ by the president; it is the confirmation of his ethical ruin. It is a conscious decision that shows his contempt for merit and transparency, a move typical of a paranoid and declining caudillo who only recognizes loyal vassals and mortal enemies,” commented Antioquian congressman Daniel Carvalho on X. Jennifer Pedraza, Bogotá representative for Dignity and Commitment, expressed something similar, lamenting that the appointment of the former mayor is the Government’s response “to the suffering of thousands of patients, just at the moment when complaints are skyrocketing.” Juan Daniel Oviedo, vice-presidential candidate for the Uribista Paloma Valencia, assured that the Government prioritizes “its ideology” over the needs of patients and that Quintero’s arrival will accelerate “the time bomb in health.”
The president has dismissed concerns about the political cost of his decision. He has expressed his frustration on several occasions regarding other officials: he has already fired four superintendents and dozens of overseers in the Health Promoting Entities (EPS). He considers that they do not execute his orders as he wants so that the public or private insurers who manage the system are held accountable for their expenses, which he considers exorbitant. Quintero, despite the reservations he causes among his allies, has promised to fulfill this. “The real reform begins: total intervention, strict oversight, and justice for those who plundered hospitals. The people will recover their right to life!” he promised after the decision was announced.
