Among the most tense moments of the presidential debate in Colombia, organized by Time and Weekis the strong discussion between Ingrid Betancourt and Gustavo Petro.
One of those exchanges of words involved the kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt in 2002 by the FARC.
It happened when at one point in the dynamic the director of WeekVicky Dávila, asked the candidate to ask Petro a question, which focused on Colombia’s relations with Venezuela and her opinion on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Petro replied using as an argument the double standard of some spokesmen who do not mention the past attacks perpetrated by the United States. “Year 2000, more or less, the United States invades Iraq. I protested, did you?” the candidate asked the former senator.
Betancourt’s response, which is already viral, was obvious: “I was in the jungle, I was kidnapped by your friends.”
Petro, however, continued speaking and insisted that he rejects all kinds of international hostility. “So, I condemn Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine. At the same time,” he assured.
A note from Time stresses that in the first minutes of the debate the tension between Betancourt and Petro had already begun. The fight began when the former senator reproached the politician for linking Piedad Córdoba with the Historical Pact.
When asked regarding Piedad Córdoba, candidate Ingrid Betancourt began by saying the following: “The evidence is there. This is Teodora Bolivar. Obviously we know that she tried to make the releases according to her political interests”.
He added: “But the problem is not in Piedad. The problem is in Gustavo who accepts that Piedad enters with those implications because he brings him political profits, financing and votes ».
Betancourt also said that there were kidnappers in the campaign of the leader of the Historical Pact. When Petro asks her who is the person who kidnapped her and who is in her campaign, she indicated that “the Commons”, referring to the Common Alternative Revolutionary Force party.
“The commons are not with me. The commons have just made an independent election to the Historic Covenant. Don’t slander me. There is no room for slander here,” Petro told the candidate.
Ingrid Betancourt insisted saying the following: “We have seen how they approach you, how you accept them; and not only to those of Comunes, it is that the absurd goes to the photos for example with Luis Pérez and, even more, more absurd, with César Gaviria».
The candidate told Petro that, despite the fact that he is once morest the economic opening with a delayed protectionist policy that, in his words, would take the country to the 1970s, now he is “arm in arm with César Gaviria.”
Petro, following losing the Presidency in 2018, maintained his permanent political activity from the Senate, where he held a seat that is assigned to the second in the elections. Since then, he has consolidated a political coalition, the Historical Pact, and leads the different polls.
The politician distances himself from the governments of Venezuela and Nicaragua and aligns himself with the progressivism of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in Brazil, and the recently elected Gabriel Boric in Chile. He, although he assures that he will resume relations with Caracas —broken since 2019— and will open the border to “fill the void that mafia groups occupy today.”
The presidential candidate has presented as a flagship proposal, for an eventual government, the transition from an extractive oil and coal economy to one focused on agricultural productivity and the promotion of cultivation in 11 main products harvested in the country, reported El Tiempo.
With information from Week and Time
