2023-08-07 11:49:22
Politics is often prodigal in paradoxes. Gustavo Petro arrived at the Nariño Palace, the seat of the Colombian presidency, under the certainty that the opposition I would lash out at his transformation program. A year later, the first left-wing president in the history of the South American country, notes that the internal enemyembodied in the figure of his son Nicholasat the head of a thunderous scandal of corruption, has become his main problem. The polarization with the right has given rise to another dispute, the one that has been called “Petro against Petro“.
1. A soap opera
In a column in the Bogota newspaper ‘El Espectador’, Felipe Zuleta Lleras considered that the accusation of money laundering against Nicolás and his ex-wife daysuris vasquez It has, on the one hand, its judicial drift, from the decision of the scion to tell everything he knows about the illegal financing of the paternal campaign of 2022, in exchange for a reduction in sentence and provisional release. At the same time, the story includes “all seasonings” by one multi-band soap opera. A child born in the province, the result of a meeting between a humble woman and an M-19 guerrilla who decides to go to the mountains. The father returns after six years, benefits from the peace agreements with the then president, Virgilio Barco (1986-1990), and begins a political career that, after passing through the Bogotá mayor’s office and the Senate, leads him to the presidency . In that way, Petro assigns “to the abandoned son” to coordinate his campaign on the Caribbean coast. The father wins the elections. Everything seems to be going smoothly until the derailment arrives.
2. Despite and revenge
The plot has everything: suitcases with cash, power, betrayal, sex, infidelity, front men, sumptuous expenses, apartments with a swimming pool, Mercedes-Benz cars, extortion and aesthetic operations. Possibly it would not have reached public knowledge so quickly if Nicolás’s marriage had not exploded in the air. The president’s son illegally recorded his conversations with Vásquez. He reproaches her for going out with his “worst enemy”. Curses go from phone to phone. He finds a form of revenge so well known to viewers: he begins a sentimental affair with a friend of Daysuris, Laura Ojeda. Pierced by her jealousy, the ex-wife has no better idea than to intercept her private communications, a crime for which she was also charged. She not only refuses to give her husband a divorce: she turns the fan on with an interview with ‘Semana’. Everything explodes. Petro reminds ‘Change’ magazine that he had never raised his son and that his other offspring are just like his father. In addition, he asks the prosecutor’s office to investigate the firstborn. The personal fight became from that moment a political matter.
3. A history of illegalities
The question about the beginning of the son’s adventures finds a first answer in 2021, a year before the elections, when Nicolás and his ex-wife began an unrestrained search for the personal benefit on the basis of resources that should be allocated to political activity or social action in the Governor’s Office of the Atlantic. Nothing compares to the links that are established, already in campaign, with former drug trafficker Samuel Santander Lopesierra, who had been imprisoned for 18 years in the United States and was nicknamed the ‘Marlboro Man’ because he was also a major cigarette smuggler. Nicolás received money from Gabriel Hilsaca, son of Alfonso ‘el Turco’ Hilsaca, to whom he was linked to far-right paramilitaries. The third of the financiers mentioned is a businessman with a dubious reputation and with two uncles in US prisons for drug issues. Those sums were partly invested in the campaign and, in addition, destined for a hedonistic life. Other names have emerged from the first statements of the disgraced son. His father, he told the prosecutor, was never aware of those games.
4. The arrest
In the early morning of July 29, the president found out about the police operation against his son. He immediately wrote on the X network (formerly known as Twitter): “As a person and a father it hurts a lot so much self destruction and the fact that one of my children goes to jail; As President of the Republic, I assure that the prosecution has all the guarantees on my part to proceed in accordance with the law. I wish my son luck and strength. May these events forge your character and may you reflect about their own mistakes. As I stated before the attorney general, I will not intervene or pressure his decisions; that the law freely guide the process”. The trill, pointed out the magazine Changewas “impeccable” from an institutional point of view, “but distant and cold for the father of a person who was going through the worst moment of his life”. The president, in fact, used condemnatory words such as “self-destruction”. According to the publication, Gustavo Petro referred harshly to Nicolás in a private meeting. He said that “I had bad habits from a very young age.“. The relationship was broken.
5. Open ending
The son, overwhelmed by the amount of evidence against him that the prosecutor Mario Andrés Burgos has, decides to collaborate. The father comments: “Hopefully one day I can talk to him and forgive us. As I said before, as president I will not put pressure on justice in your case, the judicial officials who intervene in your process will be respected by me. The campaign did not receive any money of an illicit nature And I found out about what happened through a meeting I had with Nicolás’s ex-wife.” His last message hinted at a possible future reconciliation. “I hope that a grandson is born from his new partner who can meet his father in freedom, I met Nicolás at the bars of my prison. Even in the most terrible things you learn”. And the “terrible” also stalks the remorseful father. The scandal will have its chapter in the Committee on Impeachment and Investigation of the House of Representatives. The right-wing opposition will try to reach a majority to start an impeachment trial. The vice president, France Marquez, defended the honor of Gustavo Petro. Much of the leftist coalition did the same. The truth is that under these circumstances, the second year of the Government sees its horizon of achievements clouded. The president has suffered a blow that could leave an indelible scar in the remaining years of his administration and, perhaps, until the end of his days.
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