Gustavo Petro and Álvaro Uribe met this Wednesday

Photo: EFE/ Gustavo Petro Press

The elected president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and his antagonist in national politics, former president Álvaro Uribe, met this Wednesday in Bogotá as part of the “great national agreement” that the next government wants to build.

The meeting between Petro and Uribe, who was president of Colombia between 2002 and 2010 and is the head of the right-wing Democratic Center (CD) party, which will go from being the government to the opposition, lasted for more than two hours and in the end the president-elect left without giving statements to journalists.

Expectations for the meeting between Petro and Uribe

The meeting, proposed by Petro, generated wide expectations in Colombia given the great political differences between the two, since Petro was a harsh critic of Uribe’s management as president, mainly in relation to the handling of the armed conflict, and in the Senate , where they were colleagues, also staged strong clashes.

According to the parties, the meeting began with a solo meeting between Petro and Uribe, which lasted around 30 minutes, and later collaborators of both joined them.

On Petro’s side, his head of debate for the presidential campaign, Alfonso Prada, participated, while Uribe was accompanied by Senator Ciro Ramírez, Senator-elect Alirio Barrera, the director of the CD, Nubia Stella Martínez, and the representative to the Chamber Juan Fernando Spinal.

Since won the elections in the second round On July 19, Petro, who will be the first president of the left in Colombia, has proposed to build a “great national agreement” to which several parties that opposed him in the campaign have already joined.

The president-elect, who will take office on August 7 to replace Iván Duque, Uribe’s dolphin, has maintained intense rounds of contacts with different political parties and diplomats, but so far he has only appointed one member of his cabinet, the veteran politician conservative Álvaro Leyva Durán, who will be his Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Petro plans to travel to Europe this Wednesday where he will spend several days on vacation before completing the formation of his government team.

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