(EFE).- Lately everything has been blows for Gustavo Petro, the most recent not from the opposition but from his close circle, for which reason the announcement of a bilateral ceasefire with the National Liberation Army (ELN), the longest that has been achieved with that guerrilla, finally gives the Colombian president air to breathe.
“In May 2025, the decades-long war between the ELN and the State will definitively cease,” assured a confident Petro, to whom the announcement of the 180-day bilateral ceasefire, which will begin on August 3, seemed too small and He wanted to set an end date for the conflict.
The president made the decision to travel to Cuba on Wednesday morning, before joining the demonstrations in favor of his government, where he took a mass bath and went up to one of the platforms where he is most comfortable: in front of the “people “, speaking directly to him and telling himself, almost to himself, that he was not “a president abandoned in his presidential palace.”
But the truth is that Petro, known for his self-absorption and distrust, has been very lonely for a week. A week ago he said goodbye to the person in whom he has placed the most trust since he arrived at the Casa de Nariño on August 7: Laura Sarabia, who was his chief of staff.
Petro, known for his self-absorption and distrust, has been very lonely for a week
He was forced to do so after the illegal wiretapping scandal that persecutes the former official for an alleged theft of money from her home, of which her nanny is accused, a case in which another person also close to Petro entered: Armando Benedetti, until a week ago ambassador in Venezuela.
Benedetti, who a year ago was key to Petro’s electoral triumph, according to conversations leaked to the media, pressured Sarabia, who was his own secretary, to give him a more important position in the Government and threatened to reveal an alleged irregular financing of the electoral campaign.
This scandal worthy of a political series, in the style house of cardshas affected Petro, although for now it has not stained it, so the president, whose political reforms are not advancing in Congress and it seems that he is only accumulating defeats, needed good news, which has finally come from one of the pillars of his Government: total peace.
The ceasefire agreement with the last great Colombian guerrilla had already been closed days before and Petro himself revealed it, in a veiled manner, by uploading to his Twitter – where he has become even more entrenched these days – a photo at a military meeting where on a projected screen there was a slide explaining how this measure to reduce hostilities would work.
The ceasefire agreement with the last great Colombian guerrilla was already closed days before and Petro himself revealed it
He was willing to get on the presidential plane, bound for Cuba for the first time, on Thursday at eight in the morning; he himself—a person who didn’t rise early—had set the time. But it was not even the two or three hours late that the president is used to: it was almost 12 hours after schedule when he landed on the island.
This time the delay got out – in part – of his hands. The two delegations asked for more time to finalize the final details of the agreement – which was signed barely an hour before the event – and the closing of the third cycle of talks was delayed one day, so Petro was in no hurry to reach an agreement. Cuba.
But finally on the island he has given a photograph that with the FARC was only achieved at the end of the dialogues, when the final agreement was already signed: that of the head of state and the guerrilla chief, Eliécer Chamorro, alias “Antonio García”. , shaking hands.
Perhaps it seems like a hasty photo, since peace still has a long way to go, but it reveals that the negotiations with this guerrilla are very different from those of the FARC and that, in any case, a ceasefire that relieves the populations most affected by the Colombian conflict is always good news; and more if it happens in a bad streak.
Former President Iván Duque (2018-2022) defined the agreement on social networks as a “ceasefire to paralyze the public force” and as “an insult to the country and a triumph of crime.”
“Definitely, the cynicism of these terrorists must be responded to with the force of the State and justice,” the former president added on his Twitter account.
Meanwhile, former presidential candidate Enrique Gómez, leader of the right-wing National Salvation movement, claimed for “Petro’s misrule” that “in December of last year (he said) that the barbarism in several departments of Colombia, the harassment of commerce and the murder It wouldn’t happen in the middle of that farce called the peace process with the ELN.”
“Definitely, the cynicism of these terrorists must be responded to with the force of the State and justice,” added Iván Duque.
Gómez’s tweet was added to the opinions of some users of the social network who used the hashtag #DelCesePienso to criticize and applaud the agreement signed today in the Cuban capital.
On the other hand, Colombian Police Lieutenant Colonel Oscar Dávila, allegedly involved in the illegal wiretapping of Marelbys Meza, Laura Sarabia’s former nanny, was found dead in Bogotá, the Police reported on Friday.
“We regret the death of Lieutenant Colonel Óscar Darío Dávila Torres. Our solidarity with his relatives in this difficult moment,” the director of the Colombian Police, Major General William Salamanca, wrote on Twitter.
The body of Dávila, who worked in the Presidency of the Republic, was found in a vehicle in the Teusaquillo neighborhood and the authorities are investigating the causes of death.
The death of the senior officer occurred at a time when a judicial inquiry seeks to establish whether there were irregularities or abuse of power in the interrogation to which Meza was subjected, indicated as the author of the theft of a briefcase with money from Sarabia’s house.
After Dávila’s death became known, local media reported that he sent a letter to the Prosecutor’s Office expressing his availability to be heard in an interview or interrogation to discuss the Meza case.
After learning of Dávila’s death, local media reported that he sent a letter to the Prosecutor’s Office in which he expressed his availability to be heard in an interview.
“All of the above, specifically, has its genesis in the complaints and publications presented by the magazine Week that deal with the case of the head of the Presidential Office, Laura Sarabia, in which they allegedly link the Headquarters for Presidential Protection,” the letter says.
However, the lawyer Miguel Ángel del Río, assured on his Twitter account that Lieutenant Colonel Dávila told him yesterday in a meeting that the Prosecutor’s Office was threatening him.
“Yesterday (Thursday) I met with Colonel Davila who sought me out to tell me that the Prosecutor’s Office was threatening him. They warned him that they would not stop ‘until blood was shed.’ Today he took his own life with his gun The Prosecutor’s Office is an infamous persecution,” said Del Río.
Last week, the Colombian Attorney General, Francisco Barbosa, reported that the Police illegally intercepted the phone of Meza, who said that she was interrogated in the premises of the presidential palace on suspicion of the alleged theft of a briefcase with an indeterminate amount of money from home. from Sarabia.
In this case, the Prosecutor’s Office will call for questioning and “in some cases all those responsible for these events will be called to charge” that involve “an alleged theft, practices that were denounced this week and that is added to something that is grotesque in the country, which is that the ‘chuzadas'”, as the illegal interceptions are known, “have returned to Colombia.
Meza was illegally intercepted because her telephone number was tapped by the Police using an investigation against the Clan del Golfo, the main criminal gang in the country, as a cover.
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