One controversy centers on the day off that Housing Minister Jaime Andres Beltran took at the beach, while thousands of families are sleeping in tents or outdoors due to damage caused by last Monday’s 7.4-magnitude earthquake.

The minister was photographed in Santa Marta wearing swimwear this weekend. Former Senator María José Pizarro described the minister’s leisure time as unacceptable “when millions of people are homeless, sleeping in the open, without access to potable water, and in a state of desperation.”

Representative Alejandro Toro announced a motion of censure against Beltran—a political oversight mechanism allowing the legislature to evaluate, question, and demand the removal of a minister or high-ranking official for failures in the performance of their duties.

President De la Espriella also faced criticism for personally distributing soccer balls bearing his party’s logo in Buenaventura, one of the areas hardest hit by the earthquake and also one of the country’s poorest.

Criticism regarding the disaster response is relentless in Colombia.

One of the administration’s staunchest critics is *Pacto Historico* Representative Maria Fernanda Carrascal.

“In the first hours of the disaster, they rejected rescuers who were not ideologically aligned with the government; people had to carry out rescue efforts because local governments were also completely ineffective. Now that the Israelis have arrived, they want absolute control just so they can take selfies and claim they are doing something,” she wrote on her X account.

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