He is the second head of the cabinet to roll since the protests began. The Colombian Foreign Minister, Claudia Blum, presented her resignation this Thursday, just as the Treasury did before. He never played a relevant role in the cabinet and he did not know how to carry out his work well. The negative image that the protests have projected on Iván Duque in the international community and the inability of his portfolio to transmit the other side of the coin, has precipitated an exit that was taken for granted.. The president, in meetings with other ministers, had already expressed his annoyance at some of Blum's actions.
“The strike has harmed the image of Colombia abroad because they have portrayed a dictatorial government, which is false. The 24 deaths, not all attributable to the police, and the cases of abuse of authority, are being investigated and will be punished, if they are found guilty.. But nobody talks about the fact that 864 police officers were injured and it is false that the public force opened fire on the crowd. It is very serious that they only collect the version on one side,” Senator Paloma Valencia, of the Democratic Center, told EL MUNDO. “In the demonstrations of the yellow vests in France there were eleven dead, four thousand injured and twelve thousand people arrested and nobody said that Macron was a dictator.”
It also recalls that there are 1,500 blockades of streets and highways that have prevented the passage of medical missions and food, for humans and animals.. “That has caused the death of thousands of chickens and pigs, and the cost of the family basket,” says Valencia.
The harmful effect on the nation has reached the point of jeopardizing the celebration of the Copa América, scheduled to begin on June 15 in Colombian and Argentine cities.. Different sources say that Conmebol is thinking of replacing Colombia with another country, given the perceived social and political instability.
The appetizer of what can happen was experienced on Wednesday night, during the dispute in Barranquilla, without an audience, of the Copa Libertadores match between the local Junior team and River Plate from Buenos Aires. They had to suspend the match for a few minutes due to the tear gas that reached the pitch and bothered the players. Outside the stadium, the police tried to disperse the demonstrators, who tried to prevent the meeting by shouting “Without peace, there is no football.”
Different businessmen have also lost exports both due to the blockades that prevent them from accessing the ports and due to the impression of their partners that the disorders could be repeated later on.. “These prolonged strikes and everything that has happened make us lose the credibility of the country and national products,” Luis Fernando Vélez, founder and manager of Café Amor Perfecto, told this newspaper.. “We were going to export a container to Uruguay, but it has not been able to leave Bogotá due to the blockades and the client will now go to buy the coffee in Italy, where he has no problems. We lose the job of years.”
For the international analyst Dora Glockman, “outside our borders, the feeling is that a rotten pot is being uncovered of the systematic abuse of the security forces against the civilian population in the repression of protests”. In his opinion, he tells EL MUNDO, “there is a parallel with the crisis caused by the death of Floyd in the United States. It made the role of the police question a lot.. What I have seen in the international press is that they record the same thing.”