“I always say that I will last one year in the government. I endured a little more.” admitted the former minister.

The day after the leak, Gaviria and other senior officials will attend a strategic committee with government advisers. But another sign that something is wrong is that nothing is coming.

“There was a council of ministers summoned at 5pm. I came on time, the stall is there, I sit in my chair and no one comes ”, detailed.

After waiting for about an hour, his cabinet colleague José Antonio Ocampo arrived in the room, Minister of Finance and Cecilia López, from Agriculture. Therefore, “they already know” that President Petro would remove Gaviria and two other ministers from their posts: Sports, María Isabel Urrutia, and Culture, Patricia Ariza.

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So, it was Ocampo and Cecilia López who were in charge of breaking the news of his dismissal. Alejandro Gaviria managed to send a message to the president in which he asked him to speak, but Petro didn’t reply in time.

A few minutes after that awkward conversation, Gaviria saw his colleagues preparing for the presidential speech and decided “not to bow to it”.Because of that, he admitted, he saw the president’s intervention from his car.

A day later, and both of them with cool heads, Petro and Gaviria have lunch at Casa de Nariño to talk about what happened. “He asked me what I would do and I told him I didn’t know (…) then he suggested I become ambassador to Great Britain”said the former minister.

After thinking about it for several hours, Gaviria replied to Petro that he would not accept the position because he wanted to continue expressing his opinion on national issues and reforms.

“I told him no, actually, I didn’t give him my answer then, I told him to let me think about it and the next day I wrote him saying thank you very much but no”Gaviria recounted in that interview with Caracol Radio.

“I don’t think health reform is good”: Gaviria’s criticism continues

However, apart from recounting all the details of his departure, Gaviria also gave his opinion on health reform and other current Government issues.

The former minister has always had an authorized voice to speak on health matters as he was the head of the ministry during the 4 years of Juan Manuel Santos’ rule. Armed with this experience, Gaviria has always emphasized that the Health Reform proposed by the Government is inappropriate and risky.

outside government, Gaviria elaborated on the criticism and said he didn’t believe the reforms were good. “From the first moment I said: ‘I have big reservations and some concerns about health issues because the primary care strategy is not health reform,’” he said.

Besides that, He assured that he told the president that he disagreed with prioritizing health reform over other reforms.

“Pension and tax/labor reforms are simpler because they are parametric. It will not change the system in structure. On healthcare reform, chaos is already brewing. The uncertainty that exists in the health system is a very complicated problem,” he emphasized.

For now, Gaviria He said he felt the president was torn between being radical and true to his ideas or mediating and counseling with other sectors. “I don’t know what he’s going to do… I don’t think he knows himself,” he concluded.