María Fernanda Cabal is a Colombian businesswoman, political scientist, and politician. In the 2014 legislative elections, she was elected representative to the Chamber for Bogotá with the endorsement of the Democratic Center, and in 2018, she was elected senator of the republic for the same party. Cabal revalidated her mandate in 2022, and she was a pre-candidate in the presidential elections for the same year.
What does Milei’s victory mean for Argentina and for all of Ibero-America?
Javier Milei’s victory is a breath of fresh air for democracies around the world, not only for Latin America. It is a defense of the individual with his creative capacity, of the free market, and of going against a statist model that annuls the creative spirit and generates a gigantism of the state which must be supported by oppressive taxation that impoverishes the people and reinforces a bureaucracy that only serves politicians. The victory of La Libertad Avanza represents the triumph of teaching economics in a simple way, so that all Argentines would understand why they are poor and why all those countries that have copied the socialist model are poor. Javier Milei had the ability to teach economics to young people and to rescue them from progressivism.
Gustavo Petro is losing popular support and has seen defeat in the regional elections. Will he finish his term?
If there were institutionality and justice in Colombia—and there is some, but not enough—Petro would be dismissed by the National Electoral Council for exceeding the campaign ceilings because the campaign spending limit is established in our constitution. In addition, the impeachment trial for the statements of his son and the scandals of his private secretary, Laura Sarabia, are pending, in a trial that would have already started if there were serious democracy in Colombia. This would entail the loss of his office and the beginning of a trial of criminal responsibility before the Supreme Court. Sadly, we see that this process is being ignored due to politics and because of Petro’s majority on the impeachment commission. If Petro finishes his term, he will do so with one of the highest unpopularity rates among Latin American presidents.
What is the cause of this loss of popular support: the corruption scandals or his policies?
Both. The corruption scandals undermine his credibility and expose his willingness to lie, which has been a constant throughout his career. Petro connects to the political class and is part of that political class; he is a beneficiary of what it means to live off the state, having never had any other particular business that has generated wealth. Petro has never paid a payroll and does not know what it means to pay taxes. In addition to this, his reforms go against common sense in a country that—despite many difficulties such as violence and successive economic crises—has achieved, for example, a health system that is considered one of the best in the world. It is true that reforms have to be made, but not like this. His health reform could leave us without healthcare, depending on the politicians in office, and it seeks ever greater control over the individual patient, who will have to request a permit to undergo surgery. Petro’s labor reform will concentrate power in workers’ centers that are openly communist and encourage living off the perks of the state. There is also pension reform, which was necessary but should not attack private savings or take away our ability to decide which pension fund to use. In short, everything is about control: of the individual, of his health, of his work, of his retirement funds.
Could what we saw in Brazil be repeated in Colombia, with elections marred by the possibility of electoral fraud?
As long as there is no transparency in the pre-count (a quick count of the polling stations on the same day of the elections, which has a purely informative value) and in the scrutiny of the votes, as long as the electoral roll is not purified and there are forms of corruption, there will be the possibility of fraud. Fortunately, in Colombia, we continue to use manual voting rather than electronic voting, which has proven not to work in several developed countries. The electronic and the modern are also susceptible to fraud. That is why many countries, such as Japan or Germany, have decided to return to paper and to manual voting.
In the face of a likely defeat, would there be a more radical option, such as taking Colombia down the same path as Venezuela?
Of course, there is. Petro has a socialist agenda directed from the Cuban G2 (the state intelligence agency of the government of Cuba) and, more seriously, his meetings with Iranian representatives. In Venezuela, a marriage that seemed impossible has been brewing for 15 years between Islam and communism, which have opposite objectives but share the same guardians of the revolution and the same absolutism. They are regimes in which the individual is worthless. I think Petro is going along that line: destroying the public forces, strengthening coca grower groups, and allowing cultivation. We already know what it means to be the largest exporter of cocaine in the world and to experience the levels of violence, both in the countryside and in the cities, which today already add up to more than a hundred massacres. Petro triumphs in anarchy and destruction, and I believe he is going to take us further down that road.
Petro and Boric represent the ‘woke’ line within the Puebla Group. Has Petro tried to bring ‘wokism’ to Colombia? What is the reaction of society to this ideology of the new Left?
All of the ‘woke’ ideology is unnatural. It is the prize for degeneration over good conduct. Again, it is an appeal to anarchy, to desires turned into rights. This generates a reaction in society, like what happened to Boric in Chile. Boric finally ran out of discourse and exhausted society with the use of violence through sponsored protests whose only purpose was to keep him in power and to impose agendas such as the new constitution. Petro did not succeed at such things and no longer has time to carry out those kinds of plans. But Boric’s ‘wokism,’ which is terrifying in a society that has been very conservative like the Chilean one, has already taken its toll. The same thing is happening in Colombia. Installing a gay porn actor as vice president is a vulgarity. Petro wants to take us into a civil war because he thrives amid disorder, anarchy, and destruction.
As we have seen in many other countries, a setback is not always enough to defeat the Left. Do the right-wing parties in Colombia have the will to win and change things?
Politicians beyond the right wing—which is a very limited group—must show people that they are capable and that the state is not there to put its burdens on the shoulders of the individual and society, but rather to make life easier for them. It is about communicating, which is often the point of failure for all of us who are not leftists. We thought that it was enough to tell the truth without the need for propaganda, but no, we have to do it. We have to give examples, and we have to teach and repeat a thousand times, as Javier Milei did, that we will be able to get ahead only through a free market, with a much smaller state, and by giving facilities to the individual—that is, by using the keys to the success of capitalism.
