“Today has been a very interesting day,” acknowledged President Gustavo Petro this Thursday afternoon in Sincelejo, where he arrived to attend the event to reactivate the National Agrarian Reform System. More than interesting, it was difficult. In a hearing to indict his son Nicolás for money laundering and illicit enrichment, the prosecutor in the case, Mario Burgos, revealed that Petro Jr. has already acknowledged that he received contributions from an ex-narco and two businessmen for his father’s campaign and that appropriated the money, which was the prosecution’s accusation, but he went further and revealed that part of the money came to the campaign and was not declared.
At the event, Petro initially spoke of the beginning of the ceasefire with the ELN guerrillas. Only later did he refer to the news of the day, which he described as “journalistic” information. “It was my people who chose me. I owe my choice to no one else. You have the absolute certainty that this government ends according to the popular mandate. From no one else, “he said, and explained that he does not plan to resign, but to finish his term in 2026.” The popular mandate is respected. The people respect each other, “he added while hundreds of attendees at the coliseum chanted:” The united people will never be defeated.
“If that (the income of undeclared money to his campaign) were true, this president would have to go today, because I am not Uribe, I am not Santos, I am not Duke, I am not one of those who have come behind. But we come from something different, from another reality, from another sensibility, so I have to tell that person: stop telling lies. My son did not say that, and he did not say that for a basic reason: I have never told any of my children that they commit crimes, that has not existed, “he said, as if it were a version of a journalist and not a statement of a prosecutor in a hearing broadcast digitally, with the presence of his son Nicolás and supported by a formal agreement.
“My sons and daughters have been free. They will be wrong, like every human being; they will walk different paths than mine, ”added Petro, who took the opportunity to remember when he, at the age of 24, was imprisoned. “The Prosecutor’s Office did not exist, a general of the Republic judged me.” He narrated that he was taken from jail to jail for a year and a half. “The general who arrested me today is convicted, and the one arrested today is president. This is how life moves, ”he added.
At that time when Gustavo Petro was detained, his son Nicolás was born, who today is expecting a baby. “They tortured me for three days in a row to see who I was reporting, people I didn’t even know, people I had just met because they had the idea of fighting for a different country, just like me,” Petro continued in his story. “It always seemed to me that one should not kneel in front of the executioner. Truth and dignity is the best defense instrument, even judicial”. Those words were addressed to his son: “I recommend that you do not kneel to the executioner.” The son, however, said at the hearing that he wanted to leave a record: “My collaboration with justice has been a totally free decision and free of all kinds of pressure.”
