“Hello Quinteristas”, thus begins the invitation received by WhatsApp by some contractors from the Medellín Mayor’s Office to attend today at 9 in the morning the installation of a new period of ordinary sessions in the Council. “Tomorrow is a VERY important day to accompany and surround him,” continues the message in capital letters in the original.
In another more extensive message, the recipients are not only invited to take over the steps of the Council, but to extend the invitation to “professionals who believe they wish to accompany them.” And they are warned “Do not share my message by any other chat”.
The chains worked: this morning, as usual, the installation of the sessions began with a speech by Mayor Quintero, who got up on the stage greeting his followers, who in effect filled the stands of the venue and expressed their support during the half an hour that his intervention lasted.
Quintero was dispatched once morest the councilors who last Thursday, for the fourth time, did not approve the EPM project to sell its shares in UNE. A project that he has defended tooth and nail, and that, according to what he says, he will continue to present until December 31 of next year, the day he ends his mandate.
Such was the emotion with which Quintero ended his speech that he forgot to officially open the session, and only following the applause had ceased, following 40 seconds, did he get back on the lectern to do so.
In contrast, when it was the turn of the opposition to make a statement, which was represented by the councilor of the Democratic Center, Alfredo Ramos, the shouts of encouragement turned, as in a stadium, into insults and claims.
The level of verbal attacks on the intervention of the opposition forced the president of the Council, Lucas Cañas, a political ally of Quintero, to intervene several times from the first minute to calm the mood of the gallery, like the referee of a tennis match.
Ramos’ intervention consisted of asking the mayor seven questions that, according to him, the media do not dare to ask him.
Among those, the councilor inquired regarding the sources of income of the president’s family and, following asking him if in the midst of confinement due to the Covid-19 pandemic he had attended clandestine parties at the house of a former city councilor — Álex Florez—, Cañas, the corporation’s referee, interrupted him to tell him that “politics has to be high, getting into the personal sphere is also wrong. That is not right”.
Then what never happens happened: applause —including Quintero’s— erupted in favor of the referee. In fact, in the transmission of the session, which focused on Cañas and Quintero, it is possible to see how the mayor makes the feint of extending his fist to the councilman to bump them as a sign of congratulations.
Ramos, between insults, quickly ended an intervention for which he had 20 minutes by asking Quintero: “What does it feel like to be the most hated mayor in the history of Medellin?”
