The Government of Colombian President Gustavo Petro appointed Milton Rengifo Hernández to occupy the position of Ambassador in Venezuela, replacing Armando Benedetti.
This was reviewed by a official statement from the Foreign Ministry of Colombia this Monday, which details that Rengifo Hernández will arrive at the embassy in Caracas after the “approval” granted by the Ministry of People’s Power for Foreign Relations of Venezuela, to a request previously sent from Bogotá.
Now, the designated Ambassador must come to deliver his Copies of Style to the Venezuelan Foreign Minister and, later, the Letters of Credence to President Nicolás Maduro, explained a source from the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry to Last News.
Who is Milton Rengifo Hernandez?
The new Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Colombia in Venezuela belongs to the circle of trust of the New Granadan president, with whom he worked when he was mayor of the city of Bogotá (2012-2015).
Milton Rengifo Hernández was Petro’s legislative adviser for 12 years in the House of Representatives and in the Colombian Congress, reports the newspaper Time.
In 2013 he was the Undersecretary for Local Affairs and Citizen Development, prior to that he served as Undersecretary for the Environment of the Bogotá Mayor’s Office.
This Monday morning, the new Colombian Ambassador defended President Petro on his Twitter account, in the face of the media and institutional siege in Colombia against the investiture of the head of state.
“With President Petro you can have differences, and criticize him in several facets, but in matters of transparency he is faultless, vertical. I was in his UTL (Legislative Work Unit) from 1998 to 2010 and I saw him, angry, take a lobbyist out of the office who came in to offer money,” Rengifo wrote.
Political scandal in Colombia
The former Colombian Ambassador in Caracas, Armando Benedetti, left office in the midst of a political scandal that he must clarify before the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office and of which he assures that he is innocent.
Benedetti and the former head of the Petro Government, Laura Sarabia, are linked to a case of interception of telephone calls and alleged abuse of power. Although the issue was exposed by Semana magazine, openly opposed to the Government of El Cambio led by the Colombian president.
As response to the publication of the Colombian mediaPresident Gustavo Petro assured that in his electoral campaign he did not receive money from drug trafficking nor has his government done anything illegal.
“Not much less have figures such as 15,000 million been handled outside of our accounting,” he said on his Twitter account, early Monday morning.
