Petro warns of impending coup in Colombia – Orinoco Tribune – News and opinion pieces on Venezuela and beyond

By Camilo Rengifo Marin – September 16, 2024

Colombian President Gustavo Petro reported that a coup plan is being developed in the city of Armenia, in the department of Quindio. The city has strong financial resources and wants the president of the Senate, Efraín Cepeda, a businessman and politician of the Conservative Party, to replace him in the Casa de Nariño as president of the country.

In response to a publication by the Conservative Party on social media, which surprisingly was also joined by the president of the Liberal Party, César Gaviria, Petro clarified that he did not accuse Efraín Cepeda of wanting to remove him from office. He also indicated that it is not true that he accuses the congressman of moving large sums of money to remove him from power.

“Nowhere did I accuse Cepeda of a coup,” Petro stressed on social media. “What I said is what the law says. If the president and vice president are removed, and that is a coup, the person who assumes the presidency is the president of the Senate.”

Petro also stated that this alleged coup d’état “would be financed by the mafia” and criticized the process that the National Electoral Council (CNE) is conducting against his presidential campaign regarding alleged irregular financing. He suggested that there are economic interests behind this investigation so that the case ends up before the Chamber’s Impeachment Commission so that he can be suspended from office.

Petro assured that if he had not had the support of the public, this alleged coup would have been carried out immediately. He did this in statements that sparked a heated debate in the country about political stability and the tensions between the government and various sectors of Colombian society that supported the governments of the fascists Álvaro Uribe and Iván Duque.

He indicated that the main reason why these sectors would not support his removal from power is that his perceived enemies are “not so stupid” as to push for the overthrow of a president who, as in his case, was elected with more than 11.7 million votes in the 2022 presidential elections. An attempted coup would mean a reaction from his supporters in the streets and, consequently, a popular uprising.

Popular media
During a meeting with representatives of non-mainstream media platforms, the president revealed details of what he sees as an imminent threat to his government and pointed out that significant sums of money are 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. He also noted that the coup plotters are planning his death and that “the order has already been given,” and that all that was needed was an execution.

Petro went on to talk about the importance of alternative media, that it makes possible a world where “the worker tells a news story, the farmer tells what happened in his village, the woman tells her grief and her struggle, the young man sings poetry,” a world that “does not exist in RCN or Caracol.”

“I am an example of alternative communication. I am, like you, a communicator, a man who has always fought against the narrative of the hegemonic media,” he said to some 1,500 community journalists and directors of small alternative media. Petro announced that “by order of the president, the law of thirds is being applied,” referring to his presidential campaign pledge that a third of the government’s advertising budget should go to alternative media. “We can apply it once and for all, while we are in government,” he added.

The president made the remarks in a continuation of his defiant stance against the dominant media, after accusing the newspaper of The Spectatorthe channels RCN And Carameland the magazine week of manipulating the minds of Colombians to defend the interests of the big businessmen who own them: the Santo Domingo families, owners of The Spectator, Caracol TV, And Blue radio; Ardila Lülle, owner of RCN; Luis Carlos Sarmiento, owner of The time; and the Gilinski family, owners of week.

“Whoever has the economic power is the king of economic power,” he stressed in another of those speeches, on Monday, September 9. “The owners of the world’s major media belong to the economic power.”

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Remembrance of Chile
Petro compared the truck drivers’ strikes of recent weeks to the coup against Salvador Allende, carried out in Chile on September 11, 1973. “They wanted to see if what they did to 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 has been given,” he said, claiming that a three-month deadline has been given to carry out this alleged plan, after which the Colombian government has declared that it will go “to the utmost” to end the strike.

The president continued to speak about the alleged plot against him, which he had mentioned in previous speeches, but he did not provide further evidence. “They are making a parody of the will of the people, as they did on April 19, 1970,” Petro said, referring again to the coup against Allende, after affirming that the coup plotters want people to remain passive in the face of injustice.

Petro took the opportunity to call out the alternative media that they are needed here. “A coup d’état is not the generals of the police and the army looking for a way to take over the palace and depose the president. No, gentlemen, the oligarchs of the country are not such brutes. It is a Colombian-style coup d’état,” Petro said.

Both the government and the opposition, grouped around the Centro Democrático and Cambio Radical, have almost simultaneously deployed a strategy of mutual international condemnation to seek foreign support amid the harsh polarization that is plaguing the country and which is already part of the political menu they want to offer with a view to the 2026 presidential elections.

The previous Saturday, Petro had pointed out that the CNE was taking steps towards “a coup d’état” by wanting to investigate him for possible irregularities in the financing of his election campaign. “Every step taken against the president in the electoral tribunal is building a coup d’état,” Petro postulated via his X account, adding: “Are they still complaining about Venezuela? In Colombia, a coup d’état against the president is coming.”

Petro pointed out that “the Constitution does not allow a purely administrative and political structure, such as the Electoral Council, to pave the way for the suspension of the President from his functions for an investigation in which he was no longer involved in the 30 days following the elections.”

“Those who have been defeated by the people’s candidate want to be able to make their own decisions in the Electoral Council and when filing charges, the president who defeated them and his voters must leave, without having committed a crime,” he continued.

The president also declared his rebellion on Thursday, September 12, 2024, against the ruling of the Council of State, which forced him to retract his statements against Enrique Vargas Lleras, the brother of former Vice President Germán Vargas Lleras, who accused him of embezzling 5 billion dollars while he was in charge of the New Health Promoting Company.

(CV Latinoamericano – English)