President Gustavo Petro has been very active in recent days in the social network X (formerly Twitter), one of his preferred communication channels to comment on national and international news and the actions of his government. And this Monday, the 19th, the president used this medium to talk about two specific topics: the ban on the export of Colombian coal to Israel and on the Spanish businessman Xavier Vendrell.
Petro’s defense of Xavier Vendrell
The medium ABC, of Spain, published an investigation on the Spanish businessman Xavier Vendrell, whom They say he is very close to President Petro and getting rich with million-dollar contracts in the country.
(See: Who is Xavier Vendrell and why is he accused of enriching himself with contracts in Colombia?).
Regarding Vendrell, the head of state asked if “Is a businessman bad because he is a friend of Petro?“, and He questioned whether the businessman had stolen a peso from the national budget or had contracts with his government.
“Or he doesn’t have any and they only denounce him because Xavier is from Esquerra Republicana, a legal party in Spain, which fights for an independent Catalonia, a conflict in which we do not intervene, and which has governed Catalonia even with Lluís Companys in Republican Spain, (politician) who was shot by Franco“, he added.
According to the media publication ABC, for some time now, Vendrell would be benefiting from multimillion-dollar contracts in Colombia related to waste management projects in some 12 cities in the country, totaling more than 500 million euros, That is, about 2 billion Colombian pesos, with those agreements.
(See: Ban on coal exports to Israel puts $650 billion at risk).
President Petro, together with Spanish businessman Xavier Vendrell.
The ban on exports to Israel
Continuing with the questions about the criticism he has received, the president asked “Who said it is unconstitutional to stop exporting coal to Israel when (Benjamin) Netanyahu (Prime Minister of the Jewish State) has been prosecuted for crimes against humanity?“.
(See: Hamas thanked Petro for banning Colombian coal exports to Israel).
And he added: “So, for Analdex it was constitutional not to export to Venezuela, to block it, and to prevent food from reaching hungry people there, but, on the other hand, it is unconstitutional to bring coal to the bomb factories where they have killed 40,000 Palestinian civilians, half of them children?“.
Coal
Petro He again described Netanyahu as a genocidal and inquired whether the Colombian Constitution allows “export products that help kill tens of thousands of children“.
(See: Petro defends forced investments as a mechanism to reactivate production).
“Will there be a judge who will say that it is unconstitutional to stop trading with a contemporary Herod? Does it seem so abnormal to you that in Colombia a progressive president refuses to trade with genocidaires?“, hill.
Right now I’m watching CaracolTV, which I almost never do, in its daily campaign to discredit the government and my family.
1. Denounce the businessman Xavier Vendrell, whom Spanish fascism calls a terrorist.
Is a businessman bad because he is a friend of Petro? and in…
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) August 19, 2024
This Sunday, August 18, the decree banning the export of coal to Israel was made official, a decision taken by the president since June 8, 2024 as a way to demonstrate their position against the war in Gaza between Israel and the extremist Palestinian group Hamas.
(See: ‘Listen to the Venezuelans and the Colombians’: Maria Corina’s message to Petro).
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