President-elect Gustavo Petro asked Senator Piedad Córdoba to step aside while she definitively resolves her legal situation, spoke of the “generosity” that President Iván Duque had with him during his visit to the Casa de Nariño and sent a message peace of mind to Ecopetrol shareholders.
These announcements by the new head of state were made in an interview with Cambio magazine in which he also made a proposal to modify the extradition policy with the United States.
In the talk, the president-elect spoke of the legal situation experienced by the senator of the Historical Pact, Piedad Córdoba. Do you recommend that Piety not take possession? she was asked:
“The non-possession has judicial implications, also serious constitutional ones. I wouldn’t talk regarding it. But I would say that Senator Piedad Córdoba, given the fact that there is some kind of relationship with the justice system in the United States, hopefully favorable to them, should, yes, have a compass, because her political actions as a senator are influenced for an objective fact. And it is that there is a relationship with foreign justice, which I cannot qualify. So that would warrant her stepping aside from her, even as a senator,” she said.
Likewise, he gave details of the appointment he had with President Iván Duque in the Casa de Nariño. And he praised his “generosity of him” in a detail that has deep meaning for him.
“I went to talk to Duque and well, that is protocol. He was cold at first but he became more human in the conversation and in the end he even broke the protocols and took me to a corner of the Palace. In a corridor there were two of these soldiers dressed in the time of independence and there was an urn. Then he told me: “I want to show you this.” And so I went. I saw the urn and there was Bolívar’s sword, the one we recovered,” Petro said.
“He knew what that sword meant to me. I never had it, never. It’s the first time I’ve seen her up close. When we return the sword it was an act of mutual generosity of a State that intends to change itself. Navarro was going to be Minister of Health and he delivered it. It was a symbol, the most valuable thing we had. Many of us did not understand the act, but it was a double act of generosity. Since then they said: Generosity has to be a value, which is essential if you have power. And then what did Duke do? An act of generosity. He didn’t need to show me the sword. He might have had it taken away and put back in the cellar so I wouldn’t have it. I don’t know if he fully understood what it meant to return the sword to me. The sword belongs to the people. So, from power there has to be generosity. If the left is arrogant, it becomes arrogant, because he has achieved triumphs that he had never achieved, starting with myself, we isolate ourselves. And if we isolate ourselves, they knock us down, ”Petro argued.
Faced with the drop in the stock market price of Ecopetrol, the country’s main company, the president-elect detailed the proposal for the exploration and exploitation of oil and coal.
“That’s a transition, let’s say, it’s gradual. The word transition implies gradualness. They wanted to show that this was for August 8. It is not. And I had downvotes stemming from that belief. It is not that we are not going to explore because there are regarding 180 contracts in force. What I have said is that there will be no new exploration contracts. What impact does that have in the short term? That we have to manage the proven oil reserves that we have. There are different dates. The dates depend on the amount of oil we export. If we export a lot of oil, the reserves won’t last. If we export less oil, the reserves are prolonged and that measures time. The transition is like the control lever,” Petro said.
According to him, “all the world’s oil assets are falling. They are blaming me in Colombia for that, but I am not to blame. This is happening because what has been announced is a depression, that is, a drop in demand for oil and gas. And then the market undervalues oil assets. I believe that this is going to be the world in decades, with a devaluation of oil assets».
And he explained: «It must be recognized that on the way, Duque began to make a plan and involve Ecopetrol in an issue of building solar farms. This government has already started the plan. I had proposed 3.6 gigabytes of solar energy generation to replace the thermos. Duque informed me that he has already launched 1 gigabyte. What I would do is accelerate that plan. There is an enormous possibility of becoming one of the great producers of solar energy in the world. So if you mount Ecopretrol, not on oil but on energy, the blow for the company might be the opposite. Now, currencies are another sticking point. Where do the currencies of Colombia come from? Oil and coal, and that doesn’t change overnight. How can you quickly exchange oil currencies for other different currencies?
Quickly is when? Change asked him. «Quickly it is in my government. It will not be August 8. We will continue exporting oil What’s more, in my government, more coal will be exported, paradoxically. Why? Because of the war in Ukraine the Germans are going to demand and the Europeans are going to demand more coal. That for my government is interesting. But in ten years that will not be the case. In these four years I have to prepare the country for what I know is going to come, and that is that those mines are going to close. Not Petro. As soon as the nuclear plants in Europe are turned on, it is the world that is going to close those mines. What can replace that income? What I have proposed is tourism and reactivating food production in Colombia. Each tourist is 1,000 dollars, you can do the math. That tourism is not going to explode if there is no peace. So peace becomes the key to the energy transition in Colombia », he replied.
In the interview, Petro also said that he hopes to negotiate the extradition tool with the United States.
“Propose. Because it is a bilateral treaty and then there are two, like every marriage », she said. His idea is to “subject extradition to non-compliance. In other words, the repetition by processes of peaceful dismantling of drug trafficking.
And he said he hopes to have very good relations with all sectors of society. Among them his political opponents like Álvaro Uribe and the Armed Forces.
“The goal is to build a new political climate. We have to fight both with the sectarianism of the right and with the sectarianism of the left, because that is what polarization is. It is not that there are no differences, but rather that these differences are not transmitted through sectarianism. Because sectarianism in Colombia leads to violence. What we have achieved, and there is a conversation that is already planned with Álvaro Uribe Vélez, there is another with Rodolfo Hernández, is basically to build a climate that I would call one of peace, of dialogue, without thinking of unanimity, because that is not going to exist never in a human society. If a year goes by and nothing happens, the government begins to have headwinds and the possibilities of the reforms are undone and the change becomes an illusion, “said Petro.
«The soldier and the police officer live badly. And their families too. So, what is the priority of a reform? If we want efficiency in the objectives, the social well-being of the soldier and the police officer », he assured.
And he showed his optimism for the return to comprehensive relations with Venezuela. “Relationships need to be normalized. This is because we have been here for years and there are complexities in many issues. The border is my main concern. Because there is a strong illegality, very strong. There are also some real possibilities. Cúcuta is not an Andean town far from the sea. Cúcuta is a coastal town. It is one hour from the sea. Only the sea is on the other side. So, how come we don’t take advantage of that to industrialize the territory? In other words, due to our political difficulties between nations, it does not take advantage of an enormous territorial advantage that exists there, “added the president-elect.
And he assured that this year a tax reform will be presented, which he described as “ambitious.” “It might almost be more ambitious. If one looks at the study by Jorge Garay, who is helping us, he even puts forward figures of the order of 75 billion annual revenues. And in reality, if one looks at the statistics of the percentage of taxation with respect to GDP, then Colombia really is below the Latin American average. Simply reaching the Latin American average is already of that order or of a higher order. What happens, and this is a debate, is that the OECD privileges the tax on individuals over the tax on companies, but being higher than the Colombian average, it means that they tax individual fortunes a lot and do not tax companies, which is where the production takes place. The tax reform must be presented this year,” Petro explained..
And he reiterated that his plan for the government that will begin this August 7 will be to advance on a capitalist model even to the surprise of his friends on the left:
“I think I made my friends on the left blush, but I said that in the speech because even from a leftist perspective, a society advances by developing its productive forces. It is the law and it advances towards other ways of producing. But only if its productive forces expand. Capitalism is a great trigger for the productive forces of a society. Now, that capitalism will be democratic, regulated. Against what? Faced with the environment, human dignity at work. Our economy was left in a rickety state. Half of the people practically do not have economic solutions, they look for them, but there is no possibility of economic opportunity. So, developing capitalism in a certain way is once morest old slavery, once morest many old and real mental feudalisms, for example, in relation to land it is having land for having it, without producing. That is feudalism, that is not capitalism », he assured.