Iván Duque's tenure as the 33rd president of Colombia began with his inauguration on August 7, 2018, and ended on August 7, 2022. Duque, a centre-right or right-wing leader from Bogotá, D.C., took office after a victory over the leader of Humane Colombia Gustavo Petro in the 2018 presidential election. Duque was succeeded by Gustavo Petro, who won the 2022 presidential election.

Domestic policy Legislature The beginning of the legislative agenda of the government of Iván Duque was characterized by various crises and clashes with the legislative and judicial branches. One of the first actions of his government was to object to the law that created the Special Jurisdiction for Peace as he had agreed in the Peace Agreements with the FARC-EP. Duque's objections were rejected when he received 110 negative votes in the House of Representatives and 40 votes against in the Senate, a decision that was ratified by the Constitutional Court. 7 Another of the great reforms that he tried to promote in the first place was the reform tax that sought to collect the vision of the "orange economy" proposed in the campaign. Said tax reform law was called the "financing law.".

The financing law promoted by the national government was declared unenforceable by the Constitutional Court, which led to the processing and approval of a new reform. In order not to affect the country's finances, the Court pronounced the effects of the Law until 1 January 2020. Likewise, the Constitutional Court is studying a claim of unconstitutionality against the current National Development Plan.

At the end of 2019, the Government of Duque managed to pass several laws, such as the new tax reform approved in the early hours of 20 December, or the 2013 Law that requires government officials to publish their declaration of assets and income, to register possible conflicts of interest and the declaration of income tax and complementary.

Electoral policy Territorial elections In October before the regional elections the presidential helicopter crashed which resulted in the death of 6 military personnel. During the 2019 territorial elections the government of President Duque lost the Governorship and the Mayoralty in the most important cities and saw a significant decrease in its voting going from 1‘489.240 votes to 1‘171.560 winning only the governorships of Casanare and Vaupés and having to govern in coalition in five other departments: Amazonas, Atlántico, Bolívar, Guaviare and Vichada; a fact that some political analysts attributed to the President's poor image. On 31 October 2019 the president met at a lunch with the entire Democratic Center caucus to analyze the results.

Infrastructure policy Line Tunnel After more than 100 years of planning and 11 years of construction delays, and after several corruption scandals surrounding its construction, Duque inaugurated the Túnel de la Línea, the longest tunnel in Latin America, and the most awaited and important work in the country.

Judicial policy Espionage During the government of Iván Duque a national controversy erupted around the counterintelligence activities of the National Army which allegedly intercepted communications, and profiled, more than 130 individuals, the majority journalists, but also opposition figures, and ordinary people according to their activity on the Internet.

The media described these events as a "new wave of illegal interceptions" that mainly affected politicians such as Roy Barreras and journalists from Semana, who were also victims of harassment and surveillance by intelligence units of the Army. According to Semana, these units received orders that came directly from the Central Command under General Nicacio Martínez, who resigned one day before the raids, on 27 December 2019.

Inside the installations strange events were reported, such as the presence of computer monitors turned on but without CPU and even a man dressed in civilian clothes hidden behind a filing cabinet in possession of a USB drive. They also noticed that on several computers the screws that held the hard drives were loose for which reason it is presumed that they were replaced before the raid. Likewise on seized cell phones evidence was found of the existence of WhatsApp groups that intelligence officers used to coordinate the destruction and concealment of the information.

Faced with the imminence of the revelation of the espionage operations of the National Army, the Central Command initiated a counterintelligence operation against Semana magazine and a purge within the Army, which ended the career of several officers.

Nevertheless, Iván Duque stated that the resignation of Nicacio Martínez had occurred for personal reasons, and that he had given the order to initiate an in-depth investigation to find the "bad apples" responsible for the case. He also promised to employ exemplary sanctions against the participants in the events, and put the generals of the Army Luis Fernando Navarro and Eduardo Zapateiro, as well as the Minister of Defense, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, in charge of the investigation.

In April 2020 President Iván Duque dismissed 11 officers and one general while another, Eduardo Quirós Chaparro, retired voluntarily. For its part the Casa de Nariño stated that these events were not done by order of the Government and that it had also been a victim of illegal surveillance by the army.

Media policy According to the Chapultepec Index of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), in 2020 Colombia was classified ninth in the American ranking of freedom of expression and press, as a country "under restriction" of freedom of the press. In 2021 the country descended to place #12 and in 2022 climbed to the tenth position.

Environment In environmental matters, the Government issued a series of measures that would allow studying the possibility of applying hydraulic fracturing in the country; To this end, a commission of experts on the subject was formed, which determined the need to carry out pilot tests, in order to analyze the impact of this technique in context. All this, despite the fact that in a campaign event held in Bucaramanga, on 11 April 2018, Iván Duque had stated that: "here we have an overlapping of complex and diverse ecosystems, underground aquifers of enormous wealth and risks of greater seismicity due to the type of soil, which is why I have said that fracking will not be carried out in Colombia".

Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Council of State suspended the rules that regulate fracking Even so, the pilot tests to implement this technique in the country remained firm. Until April 2021, two of these pilots had been approved, which were assigned to the companies Ecopetrol and ExxonMobil.

In agricultural matters, a resolution of the Ministry of Agriculture at the end of 2019 that decreed the fishing quotas for the following year caused great controversy, since it was believed that it would allow finning, consisting of cutting the fins of sharks to market them. The Government clarified that these quotas have been established since at least 2010, and that finning is prohibited in the country; however, various analysts question the capacity of the State to enforce regulations on said practice.

Human rights

In terms of human rights, on 6 November 2019, a motion of censure was carried out in the Congress of the Republic against Defense Minister Guillermo Botero, the fifth motion of censure presented against a government minister in less than one year.

In this same context, the government was accused of having hidden the death of seven minors in Caquetá during a bombardment, who were later reported as guerrillas killed in combat. These accusations were again the subject of debate in Congress after a New York Times investigation reported on new guidelines from high command of the Armed Forces. that could allow the reappearance of the execution of civilians by the military.

The magazine Semana would report on a silence operation within the army orchestrated by the high command to identify and punish the military who had denounced human rights abuses. In an event in which the President was present in the city of Barranquilla, a journalist asked the president about the death of minors in a bombing in Caquetá, to which the president replied, without it being clear if he had managed to hear the journalist: "What are you talking about, old man?", opening controversy again in social networks. The journalist in question then reported having been beaten by the president's bodyguards.

Institutional crisis 2019 protests

As a result of all these scandals, Defense Minister Guillermo Botero resigned before his imminent expulsion from the cabinet that was coming with the vote of the motion of censure, generating an institutional crisis. It was in this atmosphere of political tension that the Government of Duque received a new blow, when on 5 October the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Colombia announced a national strike for 21 November.

The reason for the strike was expressed through a statement, in which, according to the union leaders, the Government looking for.

Additionally, the organizers of the strike called for the march to protest the creation of an international financial holding company, which according to the organizers of the strike would be issued "in order to privatize the public financial sector."

The government reacted to the announcement of the strike by increasing security measures, through the deployment of the National Army and National Police in the main cities, but expressing its support for the free exercise of constitutional right and for peaceful protest, without disturbances. Likewise, the Government denied that it was interested in making pension or labor reforms that went against the middle and popular classes of the country, and declared that the announcements about such intentions were false news.

On 21 November, the National Strike was held, which had a massive call throughout the country, [citation needed] seeing the commerce and traffic of some sectors in certain cities paralyzed. Cities like Bogotá or Medellín had military contingents arranged at strategic points to protect the transportation and service infrastructure. The day passed normally in the country, except in Bogotá and Cali, where there were serious disturbances. In Cali, the mayor decreed a curfew, and the city was taken over by the Army's Third Brigade, due to the report of alleged bands of looters, and the sound of shots and explosions.

Later, on 22 November, a curfew was decreed in Bogotá. Critics of the government accused these measures of putting the country under a state of siege. The curfew imposed in Bogotá was the first curfew decreed by a government since 1977. As a result of the national strike, the approval of the Duque government fell to 26%.

2020 protests