The pot would enter the scene later. First, the intervention block of the Democratic Center to request the departure of Minister Vélez. By consensus of the bench, they decided that Juan Espinel and Oscar Villamizar, who are from the Fifth commission that is in charge of environmental and agrarian issues, would have more time to speak.
Their interventions pointed to three axes. First, that the Minister does not have the profile to hold that position because she is not a technician nor does she have experience in these matters. “It’s like putting a vegan to lead Fedegán,” said Villamizar at the lectern on the right that had been papered with posters with the hashtag ‘CensuraaMinMinas’.
Espinal, from Antioquia, attacked the theses put forward by Minister Vélez, such as that of economic decline. To warn that this vision cannot be carried out by an industry such as hydrocarbons, which, she said, generates some 400,000 jobs.
The two agreed in affirming that the Minister’s proposals, and her interviews in the media, have generated economic panic, weakened the hydrocarbons sector or decreased the value of Ecopetrol’s shares.
Then the pot cooking began.
Advisors to Representative Arbeláez put her in front of the chairs reserved for Minister Vélez, and other officials such as the Minister of Labor, Gloria Ramírez; of the Interior, Alfonso Prada; of Sports, María Isabel Urrutia; or from Commerce, Germán Umaña.
Vélez and company had not understood Arbeláez’s intention and in fact took photos with the pot, thinking that it was a symbol to promote the idea of community pots that President Petro proposed to attack hunger.
Arbeláez focused his 20 minutes on noticing that Minister Vélez had changed the Ministry’s manual of functions to include theologians, philosophers and environmentalists in key and technical positions. Returning to a complaint that is inside the portfolio.
The change of technical profiles is reflected in decisions such as the idea of building an energy transition line, without taking into account that an energy transition CONPES had already been designed in the previous government.
About the end, Arbeláez, released the data with which the opposition sought to echo. That, while Minister Vélez was talking about the energy transition, Ecopetrol was advancing business to import gas from Venezuela.
The pot began to emit smoke, not from firewood but from a chamber of those that are used at parties, and the representative of Cambio Radical put the meaning into it. “That business with Venezuela has already been cooked, like this pot.” Advisors to the board of directors quickly removed the pot fearing that it represented a danger.
