Benedetti: We should seek a national agreement with Uribe 3:03
(CNN Spanish) --
"The change began."
With this message, Gustavo Petro's campaign manager and confidant, Armando Benedetti, published this Wednesday a photo of the meeting between the president-elect of Colombia and former president Álvaro Uribe.
The former president confirmed last week that he would meet with the leader of the Historical Pact, who will assume power on August 7 and with whom he maintains a long-standing political and personal rivalry.
(Credit: Armando Benedetti's official Twitter account)
What role could Uribe play in the "national agreement" proposed by Petro?
The elected president has emphasized the need to reach a "national agreement" during the next period.
It is, according to what Benedetti said in an interview with Conecta2, part of the "DNA" of the Petro Government that will seek to bet on the achievement of consensus.
In this framework, the elected senator gave his opinion on the place that Uribe should occupy.
"A fact that the last elections have just revealed again is that we are 50/50. If we do not understand that this is 50/50, we are destined to fail. That is why we always want to seek agreement. And personally, I, Benedetti I said that this national agreement should pass through the hands of President Uribe. In the last decade, of ten important presidential elections in this country, Uribe has won eight," he said when asked.
What is Uribismo and how long has it been in power in Colombia?
For the advisor, it would be necessary to "seek to agree" with the former president on issues such as agrarian reform, social and tax justice, as well as environmental issues that have been central to the leftist campaign.
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The conflicting visions of Petro and Uribe
Petro, with whom the left will govern Colombia for the first time, represents one of the antagonistic political extremes of Uribe, who is located on the spectrum of the political right and whose flag is the so-called democratic security, politics - which includes, among other things , direct combat against insurgent groups—from his years as president, from 2002 to 2010 (read more here about Uribeism as a political stance).
Petro vs.
Uribe in recent years: clashes between the elected president and the former president
Petro's coming to power is seen as a vindication by those who supported the "yes" (Petro included) in the plebiscite to validate the 2016 peace accords between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC, a vote in which he won. the "no", promoted by Uribe.
The agreement ended up being modified in some points and signed a few months later.
In 2022 Petro won in practically the same territories that voted yes in 2016.
With information from María O'Donnell, Ernesto Tenembaum, Sebastián Jiménez, Melissa Velásquez and Juan Elverdin.
Alvaro UribeGustavo Petro