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Fachada de la Casa de Nariño, palacio presidencial de Colombia, con la bandera nacional ondeando al atardecer
La Casa de Nariño, sede del gobierno colombiano, en una imagen alusiva al balance de los primeros 100 días de gestión. · Imagen generada

Salud Hernández-Mora Publishes Her Assessment of De la Espriella's First 100 Days

Columnist Salud Hernández-Mora has published her assessment of the first 100 days of Abelardo De la Espriella's government.

--- The context --- Journalist and columnist Salud Hernández-Mora has published an assessment of the first 100 days of President Abelardo De la Espriella's government. According to the columnist, any reading of this start must begin with the extraordinary conditions under which the new administration took office, because the country it inherited was marked by a recent emergency and by a legacy she describes in harsh terms. Hernández-Mora argues that two factors alter any analysis: the earthquake of August 10, which shaped the public agenda from the earliest days, and the legacy of the previous government, which she characterizes as economic misery and scandalous corruption. From that assessment she concludes that the new government cannot be judged by the same standard as others. --- The facts --- The columnist contrasts the styles of the two governments. Of the previous one, she maintains that it was headed by a president she describes as lazy and unreliable, surrounded, in her account, by mediocre collaborators. The columnist also devoted harsh personal disqualifications to the previous government, contrasted with the image of institutional normality she attributes to the current presidential couple, with a serious and professional first lady. Against that portrait, Hernández-Mora states that the country is now governed by someone who works day, afternoon and night, surrounded by a cabinet she rates as first class. On security, she maintains that policy took an extreme turn: from protecting criminals, in her description, the country moved to fighting them in word and in deed, and from denigrating the military it moved to respecting and supporting them. As an example, the columnist highlights the major operation in southern Tolima against the illegal mining that, according to her account, strengthened the guerrillas. She recalls that the governor asked the previous government for that intervention repeatedly without being heard, while the new president, she states, paid attention immediately. She also values his presence on the ground as a sign of that priority. --- The positions --- On the economy, the columnist welcomes what she describes as the farewell to class struggle and to hostility toward business owners. According to Hernández-Mora, the country is suffering an economic crisis of historic magnitudes, but the president generates hope and confidence and places the full weight of development on private initiative. She also reports, in indirect form, the thesis attributed to De la Espriella that, when a company enters a crisis, the first thing is to establish whether it can recover. The columnist adds that, according to that thesis, if the company is viable, it must be made easier for it to negotiate its debts and keep generating employment. In her comparison, she maintains that the previous government created unnecessary public employment and a state she characterizes as grasping and wasteful, while the current one is taking steps to slim it down and make it effective, a line in which she mentions the economic rescue law. On health, the columnist interprets the departure of the director of Adres, Iván Humberto Sánchez, as a gesture against corruption, and stresses that the president gave full power to the minister, who according to her enjoys the respect of the sector. But her assessment is not only praise: Hernández-Mora criticizes the new government when she maintains that the tax reform punishes the middle class excessively, and she hopes the administration will rectify it. --- What remains unknown --- The columnist warns that uncertainties persist about the government's capacity to sustain this course: there is a lack of money, security cannot be fixed overnight and, in her diagnosis, military intelligence was left devastated and the public force without combat morale. She adds that healthcare presents tremendous economic holes, and it remains to be seen whether the administration will rectify the tax reform. --- Unanswered questions --- The columnist closes her assessment with open questions for justice. What will happen with the allegations of theft of thousands and thousands of millions that she attributes to the previous administration if, as she poses it, robbing a bank sends a person to prison? Will there be consequences for those who, according to her column, were accomplices of the criminals and caused deaths and injuries in the past and in the present? Will the authorities answer those questions about impunity? --- EPM analysis --- The assessment works as a structured defense of the government's start: it organizes the narrative around the legacy and the earthquake, and evaluates each front through a permanent contrast between before and now. Its value lies in setting out, from a favorable voice, the criteria by which part of public opinion will measure the administration: pace of work, security and confidence in private enterprise. The columnist herself, however, admits limits and formulates a concrete tax criticism, which turns her text into a road map of verifiable expectations. 📌 EPM Take: In EPM's view, the assessment of the first 100 days published by Salud Hernández-Mora is, above all, a document of position: an influential columnist declares her support for the new government, explains that support through the weight of the inherited legacy and the earthquake, and at the same time sets the conditions of her future backing, among them the rectification of the tax reform that she herself questions. Read in this way, the column does not close the debate about the start of the term, but orders it and leaves posed the questions of impunity and of results that will continue to mark public discussion in the coming months of the national government.
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