During the commemoration of the International Day of Indigenous Peoples, President Gustavo Petro He referred to his arrival in power, which he has held since last August 7, when the command transmission took place with the now former president Iván Duque.
“Power is a drug, power can destroy a human beingcan lead to the worst crimes,” said the president, who assured that this is a drug that causes “addiction”, because “people with power want to continue having it.”
“Then you see the tapestries and the gilt chairs and you think you are a king; that is a trap because when the president enters and believes that he is a king, that then his world is that of sitting in those golden chairs, it is because they are deceiving him, because the real power is outside the Palace”expressed the president in the middle of the ceremony, in which he received a baton made by a senior indigenous guard from the Amazon.
In addition, Petro assured that it is enough to arrive at the Palacio de Nariño to “experience that drug.” “It’s horrible, we can’t fall into that drugthere we do screw up, we have to assume a real power that is not in the Palace”, the president insisted in front of the members of the indigenous peoples, whom he invited not only to resist but to govern.
The ceremony
The invitation to the indigenous to be part of the government is in line with the appointments of Petro, who has appointed three members of this community to high positions: Leonor Zalabata, from the Arhuaca community, as ambassador to the UN in New York; former truth commissioner Patricia Tobón, from the Embera community, as director of the Unit for Comprehensive Care and Reparation for Victims, and sociologist Giovani Yule, member of the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), as director of the Unit of Land Restitution.
“I invite you not only to resist because you have to continue resisting, but to govern to really change the country,” Petro said during the High-Level dialogue of this commemoration, in which he stressed that “indigenous struggles, resistance, have achieved some triumphs in Colombian regulations (…) that seem to be more rhetorical than real”.
Along these lines, the president said thatdespite the presence in the Government, “the indigenous movement has to continue with independence” of the Executive and “strengthen, discuss and criticize the government, if necessary”.
“But he also has to take on a task: he is also inside the government and then You have to govern not only for yourself, but for the whole of society with all its complexity”, concluded the Head of State in the dialogue with the indigenous communities.
