The versions provided by Gustavo Petro’s team do not fit. After disappearing from the map of public opinion for five days, this Thursday the president-elect reappeared on Twitter assuring that he was in Caño Cristales, in La Macarena, Meta.
The case would be nothing more than one more event on his agenda if it were not for two facts that leave him in a bad light: one is that he did not make that trip this week but on July 17, that is, more than fifteen days. And the second is that this misleading explanation about his absence raises more questions about what he was actually doing or what happened to him in those five ‘lost’ days.
And it was not just any absence, not only was he not seen at any event since last Friday, July 30, but on Tuesday, August 2, he stood up 917 mayors who waited for him for at least six hours in Bogotá and never appeared.
The journalists asked questions on Wednesday and Petro’s team responded succinctly that the president-elect had a private agenda.
And the curious thing is that early on Thursday both Petro and his team came out to say that they had been in Caño Cristales. Petro did not want to be precise on the date in his trill but his team did play it.
“President-elect Gustavo Petro was in La Macarena these days in the production of the official image of the Presidency and today he returned early to attend to the scheduled agenda in Bogotá,” Petro’s press team said on August 4.
This newspaper collected several pieces of evidence that the president-elect’s trip to Caño Cristales to make a recording – on the transition of the presidential command – took place on July 17 and not between August 2 and 3.
Sources from the department of Meta, the Mayor’s Office of Villavicencio and two tour guides from Caño Cristales told EL COLOMBIANO that Petro’s visit to that place was on Sunday, July 17 and not on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.
In addition, the visit in July was in evidence because one of the National Police lieutenants in charge of Petro’s security took a photo with him, and several companions, and spread it last month. That scene was recorded in the video that Petro published this Thursday, in which he is seen wearing the same clothes that he wore in the photo that the uniformed man shared at the time on his social networks.
So the whereabouts of Petro between July 30 and August 4, three days after his possession, remain a mystery. His opponents on social networks claimed, without evidence, that he had gone overboard on the binge. His defenders alleged that he was in private and security meetings.
Ministries entangle Petro
This noise, 72 hours after his inauguration as President, is not fortuitous. Sources from his close circle detailed that Petro is dealing with a crossroads for the appointment of the ten ministers that he needs, since the Interior, Justice, Transportation, Labor, Trade and Tourism, Mines and Energy, Housing portfolios still do not have a head. , Science, Sports, and ICT.
The appointment of those 10 ministers has become a ‘hot potato’ for Petro, because behind several of those portfolios lurk the traditional political parties with which he allied himself to achieve the approval of his reforms in the Congress of the Republic, since the communities hope to have ‘representativeness’, translated into state bureaucracy.
This is the case of the Conservative Party, whose director, Senator Carlos Andrés Trujillo, is waiting for his record, Guillermo Reyes, an old contractor of his in the Itagüí Mayor’s Office, to be appointed as Minister of Transportation.
Also on the waiting list is the director of the Liberal Party, César Gaviria, who asked Petro to hand over the Ministry of Housing to him. The one who received the blessing of the former president for that appointment was the former representative to the Chamber, José Luis Correa, who has more knowledge of medicine than of housing matters.
The Party of the U, which would be behind the portfolio of Justice or that of Mines and Energy. This, after its director, Dilian Francisca Toro, announced that her community will be a government bench.
Cambio Radical entered the bid with the Liberals for the Ministry of Housing. It seems that the support of that party for Petro in the legislature will depend on this.
The co-president of the Alianza Verde, Carlos Ramón González, and a long-time ally of Petro, also put on the table the resume of his wife, Luz Dana Leal, so that she can be considered for an appointment.
With this situation and the torpedoed election of the list of eligibles for comptroller general, Petro is in the dilemma of whether to give in to his political allies or comply with his speech