BOGOTA.- The president of the opposition National Salvation Movement, Enrique Gómez, stated that the Colombian president Gustavo Petro “tries to minimize and marginalize” those who demonstrated this week against his government policies in paths marches that took place in several cities in Colombia.
Gómez, who was a candidate for the presidency in 2022, questioned the position taken by the president in relation to the marches, when he said that those who mobilized do not want change for the country.
“Today we have demonstrations that do not want to change the country and that is fine, there will always be forces that, leaving behind privileges, do not want to lose them”expressed Petro when referring to the demonstrations
On Wednesday, Thousands of people protested in the main cities of Colombia in rejection of the social reform projects of the Petro government and the violence that persists in the country despite the so-called “total peace” promoted by the president and the peace negotiations with armed groups.
In the cities of Cali, Medellín, Barranquilla, Bucaramanga and other regional capitals, protesters joined in with Colombian flags and slogans against the president.
In his criticism of Petro, Gómez argued that “listening and dialogue is a characteristic of democrats” and maintained that the current president “has been a systematic enemy of democracy his entire adult life,” Semana.com reported.
For Gómez, with the statements about the protests against his government, Petro “tries to minimize and marginalize the dealers” and brought up that “the message was also heard loud and clear in Congress, where yesterday, in a completely inappropriate manner, the Minister (of the Interior Luis) Velasco, who no longer knows what else to offer or what else to bring to Congress , tried to open the plenary session around the pension reform project and obviously failed.”
Gómez also asserted that the president Petro is looking for a justification for not holding the next presidential elections in 2026 or making them to suit him.
“Petro’s thing is stigmatizing. Petro’s case continues to be the desire to seek a justification, which there is none, for an institutional rupture, with which I am very afraid that a democratic rupture could occur in 2026. Petro does not want elections in 2026 or he wants them made by a pocket firm, company or state entity,” said Gómez.
Meanwhile, legislator Jota Pe Hernández, of the Green Alliance Party, considered that Petro and his vice president Francia Márquez have expressed that four years is not enough to fulfill the promises they made during the campaign.
“For them to stay in power, they need an articulation of many factors and when we start to look at each factor, they are working on it. They need to have a strong economic fund to be able to finance what could be vote buying or voter manipulation and “That’s what the reforms are for, especially the pension reform,” he said.
For his part, the lawyer and political activist, Jaime Arizabaleta, stated that Petro is an “apprentice” of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and his heir Nicolás Maduro.
“So he is an apprentice of theirs and we have to remind Colombians of some history and that is that Chávez, from ’99 to 2004, was a pleasant Chávez who cited the great businessmen, a Chávez with whom consensus could be reached, And from 2004 onwards, tyranny began and Chávez began to persecute the opposition and that is the same thing that Petro is doing today,” Arizabaleta asserted.
In the marches last Wednesday, protesters, in addition to opposing Petro’s reforms, claimed that “total peace” is not working because insecurity is increasing. They also protested the cost of living and freedom of the press, which they say is threatened.
Source: EDITORIAL / With information from Semana.com / AFP
