2023-08-27 07:00:00
The case of Laura Sarabia, Gustavo Petro’s former chief of staff, took an unexpected leap to the international level with her trip to Washington. There the political scientist has given a lecture on political violence against women, of which she declared herself a victim, which turned out to be paradoxical because in Colombia her former domestic worker, Marelbys Meza, suspected of the robbery, is questioned for the police attacks and the polygraph test of a suitcase from Sarabia with cash.
Also read: Sarabia denied relationship with the financing of Petro’s campaign
After resigning, two months and 25 days ago, from her high position in the Government for being splashed in that scandal, Sarabia was invited by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) not only as a panelist, but in a kind of position of power , to the point of rubbing shoulders with characters like Luis Almagro, Secretary General of the OAS, who received her in his office, ignoring the controversy she is facing in Colombia.
Within this controversy there are allegations of possible abuse of power against Sarabia, made by her former domestic employee, who assured Semana magazine that in January 2023 the then senior government official asked her to enlist because they were going to submit her to the police. polygraph test. “I told her: ‘Laura, how did it occur to you that I’m going to steal it? I haven’t taken anything, how did it occur to you that I’m going to take something from here if I know that you are going to turn me upside down there in the jail? Because he has all the power to put me headlong in jail,’” Meza said.
Although Sarabia insists on the “innocence of her conduct”, the truth is that her role in the apparent persecution against Meza has not yet been clarified by the Attorney General’s Office and the Prosecutor’s Office, who have her under scrutiny. And with this tangle pending to be resolved, she does not cease to call attention to the fact that she has gone to an international organization with the position of a victim, which could represent a method to try to calm the storm that her notorious return to office would represent. in government.
His return was stopped by the Prosecutor’s Office
From the very day that Sarabia resigned from his position, on June 2, the head of state made it clear that his departure represented an even bigger blow than the resignation of Armando Benedetti, his right-hand man in the campaign, who ended up in a muddy state -along with Sarabia– for the audios that Semana magazine leaked to him in which he mentioned the apparently irregular management of $15,000 million in the Atlantic for Petro’s presidential campaign.
“My dear and esteemed official (Laura Sarabia) and the ambassador to Venezuela (Armando Benedetti) are retiring from the Government so that from the power that these charges imply, there can be no mistrust that the investigation processes are going to be altered,” assured the president.
With this statement, the president tried to show that he would give guarantees to justice in the inquiries against his former chief of staff, but although technically she does not hold the position now, this newspaper confirmed that in practice the story is different because she is still carrying out secret some tasks for the head of state, which shows that Sarabia is indispensable for Petro in the Palace.
The continuity of the political scientist in some tasks as the president’s office secretary was, until now, a simple corridor rumor in the Casa de Nariño, but it turned out to be a reality. She even confirmed that the possibility of returning to the Government has been latent, which made it clear that Petro wants her back regardless of the scandal that she is carrying, still to be clarified.
Sarabia referred to his possible return in a statement that he released on Tuesday, in which he first clarified that he traveled to the US capital because the Prosecutor’s Office certified that there were no investigations against him and then stated that the investigative body notified him on August 18 about a summons to hear his version “when the option of resuming my work in the Government became known,” he said.
And although the political scientist did not clarify if she would hold the same position again, the head of state has given clues that it would be so. As this newspaper was able to establish, during a recent council of ministers, Petro told his cabinet that apparently he was going to have to call Sarabia again to solve problems that exist within the Government, such as the lack of communication channels and the disarticulation between him and the ministerial portfolios.
However, that is not a real option at this time due to the procedural novelty that the Prosecutor’s Office communicated to the former chief of staff, since after that call from the justice she will give her version in a voluntary proceeding on September 5. What remains to be seen is whether this will be an impediment to continue informally advising the president.
Petro doesn’t trust anyone else
The fact that the president has gone almost three months without having a chief of staff, at least a provisional one, is not by chance, and this is not a minor deficiency, since the role of the office secretary is strategic, but it cannot be delegated to just anyone. . It is a highly trusted position that is demanding and exhausting, since whoever assumes it must be in charge of coordinating the president’s day-to-day and overcome his frequent delays and absences.
Although it seems an essential position, Petro decided to remain without a secretary because the isolation that characterizes him has made it difficult for him to trust someone else to fulfill these functions and, furthermore, in his circle of trust he cannot find someone competent for this task.
The clearest sign of this, as this newspaper was able to confirm, is that the president did not completely delegate Sarabia’s tasks to anyone and, in that period of almost three months, he has contacted her regularly. She, for her part, has been willing to help him with administrative matters, especially in relation to political meetings that she managed to schedule for him before leaving office in June.
A high-ranking Palacio source explained that, for example, Sarabia contacted the president just over a week after his resignation because she was the one who organized his trips to Germany (June 14) and France (June 22), within of the public agenda that he structured with meetings and political activities scheduled to take place until December.
In addition, it served as a link to dialogue with political parties and helped him collect information to build the report on the management balance of the first year of government, which Petro delivered on July 20 before Congress.
“I know that the president has asked her many times to return and she has thought about it, but it is not something so simple because after the appointment there would be a thunderous noise for her return. He trusts Laura and her work a lot because he found a more agile and fast execution in her, something that currently does not happen with the management of Carlos Ramón González (director of Dapre)”, the senior source who requested the request assured this newspaper. reservation of his name.
And it is that there have been at least four senior government officials who have tried to assume, without much success, some of the tasks carried out by the former chief of staff for Petro, such as the organization of his daily agenda, the coordination of communication strategies, the writing their speeches and understanding with some of the ministers.
The officials who have tried to correct this absence are González; director of the Administrative Department of the Presidency; Vladimir Fernández, legal secretary of the Presidency; Susaha Muhamad, Minister of the Environment, and Augusto Rodríguez, Director of the National Protection Unit (UNP).
For now, Sarabia will not return to the position he left and which remains empty, as he assured that he will dedicate himself to knowing, together with his defense, the content of the complaint against him in order to defend his innocence in the version that he will give before the Prosecutor’s Office on September 5. And it seems that Petro is willing to wait for her.
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