This June 19, the second presidential round will take place, in this democratic process Gustavo Petro, representative of the Colombian left and member of the Historical Pact, will face Rodolfo Hernández, former mayor of Bucaramanga and who has championed the fight against corruption. In this round that defines who will be the next president of the country, the candidates who were discarded in the first round or who withdrew have taken positions, some have left with the campaign of the senator from Colombia Humana, others with that of another engineer, Hernández and another who does not identify with any of the campaigns have indicated that they will vote blank.
One of the former candidates who joined the campaign of the former mayor of the capital of Santander was Ingrid Betancourt, a former senator who first went through several groups, the Centro Esperanza Coalition from which she withdrew to run as a candidate for the party she leads, Oxigeno Verde and subsequently, falling into the campaign of the independent candidate Hernández a few days before the first presidential round.
Now after having supported the candidacy of Gustavo Petro in 2018, politics has become one of the senator’s great opponents and even, in an interview he held with the media The Independentassured that he knows that the Historic Pact campaign and its representative seek to commit fraud by buying votes.
“There will be fraud. But our bet is that there will be so many people voting opinion (informed, not bought) in our favor that we will win. This week is decisive. Fraud is endemic in Colombia and the calculations include that margin of fraud. We know that Petro is buying two million votes. All the congressmen have been approached by the Petro campaign to offer them 200 million pesos as a starting point to bring them votes. They have all the money in the world: from the cartels, from Venezuela, from the businessmen who owe them favors”, noted Betancourt who could be the Minister of Foreign Affairs if Rodolfo Hernández wins.
Despite the accusations made by the leader of Oxigeno Verde in the interview with the international media, she added that if Gustavo Petro were the winner they would accept the results and would not seek a way to reverse them.
“The campaign (of Rodolfo Hernández) is going to recognize him. We are not going to lead Colombia into a civil war. The problem is whether Hernández wins. We don’t know what Petro’s exit will be. We have seen in the videos where they appear as a mob. They talk about cheating, defaming, putting together narratives to finish off the adversary. Yesterday I was on the streets in a middle class neighborhood and everyone told me that they would vote for the old man, the engineer”, he pointed out.
To the accusations of electoral fraud and vote buying against the left-wing presidential candidate, the former candidate added that the alleged threats that Hernández is receiving and for which he remained in the United States for a few days, have been made by the Petristas.
“(The threats) come from Petrism. We are not saying that Gustavo Petro had Rodolfo killed. But as always happened in Colombia: they killed Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. And then to Luis Carlos Galán, they said it was drug trafficking but it was the Liberal Party. They are the politicians, obviously the forces behind the politicians, there are many posters that are with Petro. We are scared because in Colombia they kill. It is the mafia behind Petrismo that threatens Hernández“, I note.
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