The protocol in the imposition of the presidential band to Gustavo Petro it broke. Tradition indicates that he is the president of Congress, in this case Roy Barreras, the person in charge of delivering the symbol to the president-elect who accredits him as acting head of state. This August 7, the person in charge of carrying out this gesture was María José Pizarro, why was it significant?
“I now call a daughter of the left, a daughter of history: that story that was interrupted by the murderous bullets but that, thanks to you, is back on track today,” Barreras said and called Senator María José Pizarro. Immediately, the thousands of attendees at the Plaza de Bolívar shouted with emotion.
The moment in which the senator took the 2.15-meter-long band and imposed it on the first leftist president in the history of Colombia was recorded in the official broadcast.
María José Pizarro is the daughter of Carlos Pizarro Leongomezpresidential candidate of the M-19 – a guerrilla movement to which Petro belonged – who was assassinated on April 26, 1990 on a commercial plane going from Bogotá to Barranquilla.
The senator of the Historical Pact attended the ceremony wearing a suit in which the image of her murdered father could be seen with one of his phrases: “That the fight for peace does not cost us our lives.
“I had the honor as a woman, mother, daughter of this story and part of this political force, to put the presidential sash on our President Gustavo Petro. I feel deeply moved, happy and in a state of jubilation”, commented Pizarro.
During the opening of Roy Barreras speech, he remembered the victims of the armed conflict in Colombia.
“On a Sunday like today, but at 2 in the morning, 84 people, children, men and women, were burned to death after a guerrilla attack. On a Saturday like yesterday, 119 human beings sheltered in a church died after the explosion of a bomb. It is Bojayá’s wound”, indicated the president of the Senate.