2023-07-05 17:10:42
For his part, Gaviria is aware of the threat and made it public. “They are struggling to jeopardize the elections because they threaten the guarantees of the Liberal Party and they can even say that (the guarantees) are not valid because we did not make the convention,” Gaviria said in El Tiempo and pointed out to Petro that he wanted to start a rebellion by naming Luis Fernando Velasco Minister of the Interior.
A tug of war in the CNE
Liberalism sources assured this newspaper that Gaviria decided to respond to the government by resorting to his bishop in the CNE, magistrate Bejamín Ortiz, who represents the Liberal Party.
Also read: Bedoya, the “Trojan horse” that puts liberals in favor of Petro
This situation resulted in a challenge to powers in the electoral court that originated in May. As anticipated by this newspaper, on the 24th of that month Judge Márquez presented a resolution to sanction Gaviria and force him to hold the convention, but that same day Ortiz pulled an ace up his sleeve by requesting the rotation of the file.
With this agile move, the magistrate of liberalism managed to delay the resolution and although Márquez has insisted – from the Presidency of the CNE – that it is urgent that the Plenary Chamber proceed with a decision, Ortiz managed to have the file continue without being addressed and it has been postponed for more than a month.
“It is certainly a threat. She is an openly Petrista magistrate (Márquez) who held positions of trust in the Petro Mayor’s Office in Bogotá. That makes it very clear where the intentions of the government are heading, just ahead of the regional elections”, stated the liberal representative Julián Peinado.
The truth is that this is not the only pulse that Gaviria has won, so far, against the head of state, since at the close of the last legislature he managed to get the liberal legislative bench to refuse to debate the health reform until the July 20 and by disarming Petro’s quorum prevented the initiative from being taken to the extra sessions.
Also read: Alliance between Germán Vargas Lleras and César Gaviria is brewing, do they want to stop Petro’s reforms?
Gaviria launches another counterattack
Faced with this feeling of threat through administrative channels, the former president responded with the same coin to the Casa de Nariño and seeks to give Petro a ‘low blow’ in the face of a sensitive issue for him: the scandal that the Benedetti audios uncovered in those who speak of the illegal income of $15,000 million to the campaign.
Gaviria seized the upper hand by getting Ortiz delegated the investigation of that scandal, a task that he will carry out together with magistrate Álvaro Hernán Prada, who is a representative of the Democratic Center. And that influence of the former president seems to be giving results, since the CNE summoned Benedetti and Sarabia on Tuesday in 13 days.
Both will have to account for the financing of Petro’s campaign and, in addition, Ortiz and Prada asked the Registrar’s Office for the list of electoral witnesses of the Historical Pact, and the Confiar Cooperative for the bank statements of the campaign.
The Petro-Gaviria fight is concentrated in the CNE, but the former president is also moving in Congress, where he called for a political bloc that opposes the reforms and the first to ask for a clue was Germán Vargas Lleras.
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