Petro Delivers Final Speech as President of Colombia

On July 20, Colombian President Gustavo Petro delivered what he said would be his final public speech before handing over the presidency to his successor. In the most recent presidential election held on June 21, the candidate Petro supported – leftist Iván Cepeda – lost in the runoff by a narrow margin (fewer than 300,000 votes) to the far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella. Petro has alleged fraud in the vote count and that, for this reason, he does not and will not recognize De la Espriella as the legitimate president of Colombia.

Statements by Petro and De la Espriella have led to the suspension of the information handover meetings that typically take place between the outgoing and incoming administrations. De la Espriella announced the future creation of a commission to investigate alleged crimes committed by Petro’s administration, a move interpreted by progressive and leftist forces as the announcement of a new cycle of political persecution – this time, as Petro himself stated, through the ordinary justice system, in a process known as “lawfare.”

For his part, Petro has positioned himself (even before the new government took office) as an opponent of De la Espriella’s announced and intended policies, such as complete alignment with the interests of Washington and Tel Aviv, the end of the peace process initiated several years ago in Colombia, and the radicalization of the neoliberal model, for example, through the announced 40% reduction in the size of the state.

Electoral Fraud and Threats to Democracy

Thus, Petro has already issued strong statements against the incoming government’s far-right agenda. It is no coincidence that in his latest public speech, Petro appeared before thousands of his supporters wearing a T-shirt that read “We are the land of the jaguar,” a clear reference to the animal De la Espriella uses in his political campaign – a tiger.

In his latest speech, Petro emphasized the historical significance that building peace has held for various politicians in a country like Colombia, which has been ravaged by political and state violence and deep social inequalities. That is why he highlighted the example of Carlos Pizarro, a former Colombian guerrilla fighter who laid down his arms to pursue a political career and was later assassinated while running for president – a fate shared by thousands of left-wing party activists in Colombia, as was the case with the Patriotic Unity party.

Regarding the end of his term, Petro said: “To the people of Colombia, to whom I am accountable – whose mandate I expressed in 2022 and have fulfilled – and which ends on August 7 the moment someone takes the presidential sash and swears an oath to a constitution that I hope he will respect.”

“The homeland is the people. Never forget that. Whoever attacks the homeland attacks the people. And whoever attacks the people attacks the homeland,” Petro said before thousands of supporters, implying that any political decision that goes against the interests of the Colombian people is a way of tarnishing the homeland.

In this regard, President Petro called on the armed forces and the police not to point their weapons at the people. “This is not an order from the current president of Colombia; it is an order from the Constitution and from the liberator Simón Bolívar, who said: ‘Cursed be the soldier who points his weapon at the people.’ What matters is not the power or technology of the weapon, but the intelligence of the mind; and if the mind is intelligent, it aims where it should, and if the mind is brutalized, it aims at the people, where it should not.”

Regarding De la Espriella, Petro said: “Now we have someone who not only admires bullfights but also genocide, and who will now establish diplomatic relations with someone whom all of humanity has called on to be tried in an international court for murdering 22,000 babies in their cribs, crushed by roofs brought down by missiles.”

Petro also said that Cepeda was actually the one elected president, and that he had already submitted evidence proving how the fraud was carried out – in which, he claimed, Israel played a role: “We uncovered how Netanyahu’s support was used to override the legitimate will of the Colombian majority and install – as president – some so-called ‘tiger.’ There are no tigers in the Americas. You and we are jaguars.”

Regarding recent events in the United States involving Colombians, Petro said on X: “I hope that Colombians abroad will celebrate the cry for freedom and pay tribute to Joan Sebastián Duran Guerrero, who was killed by ICE in Maine, US, and to Beto Coral, who was a political prisoner in the United States as a result of an anti-immigration policy that has violated human dignity.”

The Achievements of his Administration

In other parts of his speech, Petro gave a lengthy overview of his government’s progress on social issues. He spoke about the significant wage increase he enacted, the marked decline in state violence during his administration, and the reduction in poverty, unemployment, theft, and hunger – the most significant in 21st-century Colombian history – as well as the rise in employment.

Petro also emphasized that, during his four years in office, mortality from malnutrition fell by 71.4%, overall mortality among children under 1 year of age by 32.9%, mortality among children under 5 by 34%, and maternal mortality by 51%, which demonstrates his effective management of the health sector, contrary to the criticism he has received from the right-wing press in recent months.

Regarding education, Petro said that nearly 97% of students at public universities attend tuition-free, and that the number of spots for first-time college entrants increased by more than 400,000, making his term the one with the biggest numbers of university students in Colombia’s history (nearly 70% of young adults are in college), which has been made possible by the massive increase in public spending on education carried out by his government.

A future of possible persecution and peaceful resistance

On the future of Colombia, Petro said that the decision-makers in Colombia will not be De la Espriella, but rather “Marco and Donald,” referring to Marco Rubio and Donald Trump, who, according to Petro, have imposed De la Espriella as Colombia’s president. “The next president of Colombia will be a servant of the United States. We have gone from the status of a republic to that of a viceroyalty, just as we did 216 years ago … Today it is up to us to issue the second cry for independence and to shout ‘liberation’ and ‘resistance.’”

“In light of this, I propose that we organize peaceful resistance. We already know from contemporary history that violence reduces our numbers. No. The demonstrations must be three, four, or ten times larger than these,” said Petro in response to the challenges that progressive political forces will face, which he identified as reforms to the healthcare system, anti-worker tax reforms, the imprisonment of progressive leaders, the revocation of the legal status of the Pacto Histórico (his party), and efforts to imprison Petro himself.

Thus, Petro said it is necessary to strengthen social and workers’ organizations to confront the danger posed by the new government, through massive and peaceful mobilization in the streets, including general strikes in response to labor reforms, rollbacks in agrarian reforms, and attacks on public education.

In this way, Petro has defined the political landscape and positioned himself for political struggle in the face of a future fraught with uncertainty and a clear political shift that the new government will aggressively pursue.

Courtesy: Breakthrough News