The Attorney General’s Office suspended this Tuesday the director of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD), Carlos Carrillo, for describing Abelardo de la Espriella’s presidential candidacy as “an openly fascist project.” The decision, due to the prohibition public officials have on participating in politics, is in effect until June 21, the day the second round of the presidential elections will be held. Carrillo thus joins the ambassadors in Haiti and Brazil, Vilma Velásquez and Alfredo Saade, who were suspended in recent days for similar cases.
The paradox is that the suspension is due to statements in which the UNGRD director, this very Tuesday, defended President Gustavo Petro from similar accusations. For Carrillo, it is understandable that the president wants to comment on the elections. “He is a man who feels a real affection for the Colombian people. He wants a better country and that is what we have been doing in this government, and of course I understand the concern that an openly fascist project is rising in Colombia,” he said. “When 10.3 million people vote for a candidate who promises to gut the other half, the president’s concern is understandable,” he justified.
The UNGRD director had also reiterated the government’s criticisms against this rule that prevents officials from expressing their support or rejection of candidates. “It is very hypocritical,” he commented. According to him, “improper” participation is “allocating public resources to favor or harm a candidate,” but it does not extend to expressing political opinions during the campaign. Something similar has been maintained in recent weeks by one of Carrillo’s rivals in the Executive, the Minister of the Interior, Armando Benedetti. “There are a number of legends and myths that have nothing to do with participation in politics,” he said referring to more extreme cases, such as “firing an employee if they don’t vote,” conditioning a salary increase on the elections, or explicitly calling to vote for a candidate.
However, the oversight bodies have refuted these interpretations. The Ombudsman, Iris Marín, asked the president and his ministers last week to refrain from expressing any kind of stance. “We observe conduct on the part of the high government that may constitute an influence in favor of certain, or a certain candidacy, or against others,” she emphasized. She also pointed out the limited possibilities of the control bodies to act in time. “By the time the competent authorities arrive and make a decision, the elections will have already passed,” she lamented.
Moreover, there are multiple precedents. Four years ago there was another famous case. The then mayor of Medellín and today superintendent of Health appointed by Petro, Daniel Quintero, published a video in which he was driving a vehicle and defended the “change in first gear,” referring to a campaign slogan of the current president. The Attorney General’s Office suspended him then while the elections were taking place.
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Carrillo’s suspension adds to those of ambassadors Velásquez and Saade. The ambassador in Haiti had said earlier this month that Iván Cepeda is “a magnificent candidate.” Her counterpart in Brazil, for his part, asked the president to resign from his position to “be free of ties” to campaign and “put 15 million votes in the ballot boxes.” Other officials are under investigation, but without suspension. One of them is the Minister of Health, Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo, who on May 31 called for massive voting because, otherwise, he and other supporters of Petroism will be “taken by the devil.”
Petro, for his part, avoids explicit mentions of Cepeda or de la Espriella. He often resorts to metaphors, such as his identification with a jaguar and the ultra candidate’s with a tiger. “The jaguar is American, Colombian, but bringing foreign beasts ends nature and humanity,” he said a few days ago in Barranquilla, before clarifying that he was only talking “about animals” and not politics. His statements have provoked countless complaints from oversight bodies, the opposition, and civil society.
During his tenure, Carrillo has been characterized by 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. In April, he questioned the president for having appointed Quintero to the Superintendency. “Real respect is taking care of those we admire, even from their mistakes,” he commented.
