Is Álvaro Uribe politically dead?
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(CNN Spanish) --
"Colombia will appreciate that we find common points," President-elect Gustavo Petro responded on Twitter after his great political enemy, former President Álvaro Uribe, confirmed that he had accepted an invitation to meet.
Can they find "common ground"?
So far, the public attacks on him over the years show their deep differences.
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 banner 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'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.
Both share, yes, the fact of being politicians who generate love and hate.
And a polarization that, according to 2018 surveys, already had many Colombians tired.
Álvaro Uribe accepted the invitation and will meet with the elected president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro
Their clashes have been ideological but also deeply personal.
Here, the review of some of them that have had the Congress and social networks as a stage.
2022: dispute over the legislative elections, with an accusation of inviting a "coup d'état" included
After the legislative elections in March, in which the left was the big winner, Uribe expressed on Twitter his "mistrust" towards that victory of Petro's party, the Historical Pact.
He spoke of "inconsistencies" such as forms with "cross-outs, amendments, signatures that do not match" and the "overwhelming vote of Petrismo in drug trafficking zones" and said that the result could not be accepted.
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Petro went to the crossroads: "I invite all political parties to reject the invitation to the coup d'état that Uribe has made with his candidate. It is time to defend everyone's democracy. It is time for a calm change."
The votes were validated by the electoral organisms and the triumph of the Historical Pact has not been questioned, which was also reiterated in the presidential elections, the results of which Uribe quickly "accepted".
2021-2022: crossed accusations, from Chávez to the 'paracos'
During the electoral campaign period the accusations were frequent.
In May of this year, Petro directly linked Uribe to the paramilitaries (something he has done on several occasions) in a speech, while appearing to refer to his proposal for "social forgiveness."
"That Uribe and his paracos be cornered, as they deserve. Uribe to go take care of his grandchildren. The paracos, the paracos that come here because they will have a second chance," Petro said during a campaign rally in Magdalena, as can be seen in this video.
Uribe has always rejected these accusations and although he has investigations against him, he has no judicial convictions that show any link with paramilitaries.
The former president, however, is being investigated (and resigned his seat in the Senate in 2020 due to that case) for allegedly manipulating witnesses in his favor in a process that links him to paramilitary groups.
Mario Uribe, Álvaro Uribe's cousin, was convicted in 2011 of conspiracy to commit a crime for promoting self-defense groups.
For his part, the former president has spared no criticism and messages that associate Petro with Hugo Chávez, the late president of Venezuela.
"Colombia may have the worst neocommunism in the region, because Dr. Petro is much more intelligent than (Hugo) Chávez, Dr. Petro is much more intelligent than (Pedro) Castillo, than President (Alberto) Fernández de Argentina, Dr. Petro is much more intelligent than Daniel Ortega from Nicaragua. That is why I have said very thoughtfully that the teacher was not Chávez, it was Petro who taught Chávez," Uribe said in November 2021, during statements that They went viral in the last few hours.
Being the "most intelligent leader of neocommunism," if Petro won Colombia, he could have "the most dangerous communism in the entire region."
Although Petro in 2013 described Chávez as a "great Latin American leader", he has distanced himself from the Government of Venezuela, has criticized Chavismo and Maduro and said that the last time he spoke with Chávez was in 2006.
2020: Petro, Uribe and Pablo Escobar
One of the notorious confrontations of 2020 between Petro and Uribe had a third protagonist: the drug lord Pablo Escobar.
The controversy broke out in June, after Vice President Marta Lucía Ramírez acknowledged that her brother was sentenced after an investigation for drug trafficking in the United States.
Uribe defended her as an "exemplary" official and reviewed her policies, while Petro called for her resignation.
The issue of links with drug trafficking quickly passed through networks to Petro and Uribe themselves.
Petro, in what local media described as a defense against messages linking him to Escobar, wrote: "For those who speak of any relationship between me and Pablo Escobar, I tell you, Pablo Escobar had a relationship with Álvaro Uribe Vélez's father, not with mine, and he was José Obdulio's cousin, not mine. Too bad, but the politicians of the Escobar Cartel are in power."
José Obdulio Gaviria, Álvaro Uribe's squire during his presidencies and later senator of the Democratic Center party, is the cousin of Pablo Escobar Gaviria.
And Uribe replied: "I wish this coward, slanderer, swindler of citizenship, had a little of the courage of my father, assassinated 37 years ago yesterday when he shot the FARC to keep his word not to let his family or his person be kidnapped. ".
Álvaro Uribe's father, Alberto Uribe Sierra, was assassinated in 1983 by armed men and according to the family they were a FARC man, but the leaders of the now-extinct guerrilla denied in 2020 before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace that they had ordered that crime.
2019: the accusation of "hitman, hitman, hitman" in Congress
In a session of Congress in 2020, Petro said that Uribe was pressuring President Iván Duque so that the names of people who had benefited economically from the armed conflict and who would go to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace were not known, among other accusations, such as
El Tiempo
reported at the time .
And Uribe launched a response that went down in history: he said that he preferred "80 times the guerrilla in arms (in a reference to Petro's past in the M-19) than the moral assassin defaming."
And he finished off the criticism with a "hitman, hitman, hitman."
Read: What is the history of Gustavo Petro in the M-19 guerrilla?
"He is out of control because of my intervention regarding the JEP, that they give him an urgent intravenous injection of valerian," was Petro's response, in this case on Twitter.
With information from Sebastián Jiménez Valencia