Bogota. President Gustavo Petro added fuel to the fire that was lit by the massive marches last Sunday against his government, publishing a strong message in which he accuses the traditional elites of being intransigent regarding his social reforms and of manipulating citizens.
“They believed that the change was lies,” the head of state ironically alluded to the aggressive campaign against them promoted by the opposition parties and employers’ unions through the majority of the country’s media.
In his extensive message he insinuated that the establishment is scared and therefore “looks for excuses to overthrow the President of the Republic because he defends the workers, the peasants, the indigenous people, the excluded regions and the poor neighborhoods.”
By sharing the astonishment of millions of Colombians who saw images of anti-Petro protesters carrying coffins with the president’s supposed corpse, trampling posters with his photo or displaying banners that said “Petro gonorrhea”, while shouting high-caliber insults and demanding his departure of the House of Nariño, the president stated that “hatred has already spoken, now let love speak, let the culture speak about lies, rudeness and ignorance.”
This will happen – according to the head of state – in the traditional May Day march where, with the approval of the unions, he will participate and speak.
Local analysts predicted today that Petro’s speech on International Labor Day will mark a before and after in the course of his government, which in August marks two years, half of the Colombian presidential term.
The seasoned political leader Andrés París, who was a FARC guerrilla for 30 years and signed the 2016 peace agreements, told The Conference that on May 1, Petro “will insist on the importance of the reforms, giving the popular sectors the future of the changes he proposes.”
“Notified on Sunday that the elites are not in the process of making agreements with the government but rather in sabotage mode to prevent him from finishing his mandate, the president is going to announce the deepening of his strategies in social matters and on the issue of peace, without burning the ships, but giving the people the management of them in a more obvious way,” commented the sociologist and historian Horacio Duque, also consulted by this newspaper.
The message published by the president emphasizes that he took careful note of the message of his opponents who, he said, seek at all costs reasons to remove him from power, forgetting that they were “the ones who used money from Odebrecht and the multinational Keralty, as well as gangsters and paramilitaries to finance their electoral campaigns.”
When recounting all the setups that have been carried out against him, he did not forget that the former attorney general (attorney), Francisco Barbosa, not only trapped his eldest son, but also “raided his house, violating his room where he was with his woman, naked and pregnant.”
After ensuring that the elites hate him “because I am not going to the clubs of the powerful to sell the treasury for crumbs,” Petro asserted that he will not let himself be knocked down: “I will not be in the presidency beyond August 7, 2026, but neither will I will be one day less,” he warned.
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– 2024-04-29 22:25:30
