Before the Legislature, Petro denied crisis in security and economy

Before the new Congress, President Gustavo Petro delivered what he claimed was his last speech as head of state.

The president began his speech insisting, without presenting evidence, on an alleged fraud in the presidential elections, in which Abelardo De La Espriella defeated his candidate, in response to the call made by former Senate President Lidio García. Petro’s words provoked strong boos among the new members of the Legislature.

In a lengthy speech, the outgoing president presented what he considers his main achievements. The figures he presented differ, to a large extent, from those presented by experts in various areas and from realities such as the health system crisis. “Today there is less poverty and less inequality, which guarantees that Colombians have a better life,” Petro stated amid applause from the Historical Pact congressmen.

The president claimed that 1.8 million Colombians stopped being poor in 2025 and that one million escaped extreme poverty. According to the latest figures from Dane, the incidence of monetary poverty stood at 28 percent in 2025, a reduction of 3.8 points compared to 32 percent in 2024. Meanwhile, extreme monetary poverty fell from 11.7 to 9.6 percent.

Petro made no mention of the management of public debt, which his government leaves at levels even higher than those recorded during the pandemic, nor of the increase in public spending, especially during the election year.

One of the most questioned claims was that his government saved Nueva EPS with the intervention, a version that contrasts with the entity’s financial statements. At the end of 2024, the EPS, the one with the largest number of affiliates in the country, reported assets of $10.6 trillion and liabilities of $22.5 trillion, reflecting a negative net equity of $11.9 trillion.

In terms of security, the president also sparked controversy. He claimed that no opposition member died during his government, a false statement questioned, among others, by María Claudia Tarazona, widow of Miguel Uribe Turbay, senator assassinated during the Petro administration, who was accused of negligence in his protection scheme.

“How can he say that, when he is an accomplice in the murder of Miguel Uribe Turbay, the opposition leader in Colombia? Shameless, liar, corrupt,” wrote Tarazona.

Petro also denied that there is a security crisis, but figures from the Ministry of Defense point in another direction. In 2025, the homicide rate was 26.4 per 100,000 inhabitants, the highest since 2021. The trend has not improved either: between January and May 2026, the number of murders already exceeds that recorded in the same period of the previous year.

The outlook is also worrying in terms of massacres. In the first six months of 2026, 87 percent of the total of these events recorded during all of 2025 had already been perpetrated. According to Indepaz, as of June 30, 68 massacres had been documented, an average of one every two days.

During 2025, more than 190 uniformed personnel were killed in operations or attacks by illegal armed groups. So far in 2026, there have been 43. Added to this is the deterioration of the humanitarian situation. According to the Ombudsman’s Office, this year, on average, 500 people have been confined or displaced each day as a result of violence in different regions of the country.