By Camilo Rengifo Marin on September 16, 2024
Colombian President Gustavo Petro revealed in Armenia, Quindío, that a plan for a coup d’état is being forged, which has strong financing and would seek that the president of the Senate, Efraín Cepeda, businessman and politician of the Conservative Party, replaces him at the Casa de Nariño.
In response to a publication of the Conservative Party in social networks -to which the president of the Liberal Party, César Gaviria, surprisingly joined-, Petro clarified that he wasn’t accusing Efraín Cepeda as the one responsible for wanting to remove him from office, and also that it is not true that he is accusing the congressman of moving large amounts of money for his exit from power.
“Nowhere did I accuse Cepeda of a coup d’état. What I said is what the law says. If the removal of the president and vice-president takes place, and that is a coup d’état, who assumes the presidency is the president of the Senate,” Petro stressed in networks.
He affirmed that this alleged coup d’état would be “financed by the mafia”. He criticized the process being carried out by the National Electoral Council (CNE) against his presidential campaign for alleged irregular financing, suggesting that there are economic interests behind it so that the case reaches the Accusations Commission of the Chamber, in order to suspend him from office.
Petro assured that, if he did not have popular support, this alleged coup d’état would have materialized immediately, in statements that have generated an intense debate in the country about political stability and tensions between the government and diverse sectors of the Colombian society that felt more comfortable with the governments of the ultra-right-wing Álvaro Uribe and Iván Duque.
He indicated that the main reason why the high command would not be behind his exit from power is because his alleged enemies “are not so stupid” to push for an overthrow of a president who, as is his case, was elected with more than 11,700,000 votes during the June 19, 2022 elections. An attempted coup would mean a response from his supporters in the streets and, consequently, a popular insurrection.
Popular media
During a meeting with representatives of alternative media, the president exposed details of what he considers an imminent threat against his government and pointed out that there are important sums of money involved in these alleged impeachment attempts. To contextualize his argument, Petro referred to recent events in other Latin American countries, such as the attempted military uprising against Bolivian President Luis Arce, and the impeachment of Pedro Castillo in Peru.
A measure, Petro said, will allow a world in which “the worker tells a news story, the peasant tells what happened in his village, the woman tells of her sadness and her struggles, the young man sings poetry”. A world that, says Petro, “does not appear in RCN or Caracol”. He also commented before the popular communicators that they would be planning his death, in an objective that would only remain to be executed, since “the order would already be given”.
“I am an example of alternative communication. I, like you, am a communicator”, a man who always fought against the narrative of the hegemonic media, he said before some 1,500 community journalists and directors of small alternative media, before whom he announced that ‘by presidential directive, the law of thirds is applied’. This is a promise of his presidential campaign whereby one third of the government’s advertising budget must go to the alternative media “We can apply it once and for all, while we are in government”, he added.
The president resumed a defiant attitude towards the hegemonic media: he has accused the newspaper El Espectador, the channels RCN and Caracol, the magazine Semana of manipulating the minds of Colombians to defend the interests of the big businessmen who are their owners -the Santo Domingo families, owners of El Espectador, Caracol TV and Blu Radio; Ardila Lülle, owner of RCN; Luis Carlos Sarmiento, owner of El Tiempo; and the Gilinski family, owner of Semana.
“The king is the economic power, the owners of the great media of the world belong to the economic power”, he pointed out in another of those speeches, on Monday, September 9.
Remembering Chile
Petro compared the truckers’ strike of the previous weeks with the coup d’état against Salvador Allende, carried out in Chile on September 11, 1973. “They wanted to see if Salvador Allende could be repeated, by blocking the roads to overthrow the president, which is what they want to do: either the president dies or they overthrow him, the order is given”, he said, and affirmed that a term of three months to execute this alleged plan. Colombian government says it will go “to the limit” to lift the strike.
“Either they assassinate the president or they overthrow him. We do not want Petro anymore”, said the president about the alleged plan against him, which he has mentioned in previous speeches, but has not provided further evidence. “They make a mockery of popular vote as on April 19, 1970”, Petro said, after affirming that they would seek for the people to remain passive.
At that point he addressed the young people with alternative means to tell them that this is where they are needed: “A coup d’état is not the generals of the Police and the Army, looking for a way to take over the Palace and remove the president, no gentlemen, the oligarchs of the country are not such brutes. It is a Colombian style coup d’état”, said Petro.
Both the government and the opposition grouped around the Centro Democrático and Cambio Radical deployed, almost at the same time, a strategy of mutual international denunciations to seek foreign support in the midst of the harsh polarization that plagues the country and that is already part of the political menu they want to offer in view of the 2026 presidential elections.
The previous Saturday, Petro had pointed out that the National Electoral Council (CNE) is taking steps towards “a coup d’état” by wanting to investigate him for possible irregularities in the financing of his electoral campaign. “Each step taken against the president in the electoral council builds a coup d’état,” Petro estimated in his X account, who added: ”Are they complaining about Venezuela? In Colombia a coup d’état is advancing against the president”.
Petro pointed out that “the Constitution does not allow a purely administrative and political instance such as the electoral council, to pave the way to suspend the president from his functions for a cap investigation over which he had no more competence than the 30 days after the election”.
“Those defeated by the candidate and by the people want to decide in the electoral council and in the commission of accusations that the president who defeated them and his electorate should leave, without having committed any crime”, indicated the president.
The president declared himself in rebellion on Thursday, September 12, 2024 before the ruling of the Council of State that forced him to retract the statements he made against Enrique Vargas Lleras: brother of former vice president Germán Vargas Lleras, whom he accused of alleged embezzlement of five billion when he was in charge of the New Health Promoting Company.
Source: Latin American Center for Strategic Analysis, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English