The Petro-Uribe enigma: two enemies defending themselves

When Petro entered the door, Uribe had already drunk the first infusion.

“President,” greeted one.

"President", the other corresponded.

They sat on a sofa in the house of Héctor Carvajal, a lawyer friend of both.

It was the third time they had seen each other in a little over six months.

It was night, and Petro looked visibly tired from a very busy day, he had just arrived from Bucaramanga on the presidential plane.

Uribe asked him out of the blue how he saw the situation in the country.

Instead of answering, the current president returned the question and listened for a long time to Uribe's analysis of the economy, his main concern.

"An affable, calm pod, like two friends," according to a witness to the meeting.

Then they both got up and sat down at a table,

The relationship that Gustavo Petro and Álvaro Uribe have forged in the last six months is one of the great enigmas of Colombian politics.

What are they looking for each other?

In the past they were bitter enemies, they hated each other.

Now they meet from time to time and discuss current affairs in the country.

In public they respect each other like never before.

The other day, Uribe made ugly in front of a crowd a man who insulted Petro with a microphone in hand.

Petro has stopped referring to Uribe in his speeches, to his estates, to his legacy, something he used to do frequently, almost like a vice.

How have they gotten to this point?

The first contact between the two occurred through Carvajal, a 64-year-old lawyer with a law firm in the north of Bogotá.

Carvajal knew Petro very well, whom he had defended when he was dismissed and disqualified as mayor of the capital.

In addition, he had handled a case involving Uribe's children that had given his father real headaches.

Uribe congratulated the lawyer when he won the lawsuit.

Petro, with whom he sometimes dined, was aware that he had handled that case and that he had a good relationship with the family.

That is why he did not hesitate to ask Carvajal to let Uribe know that he wanted to have a private meeting with him.

That was one of his first decisions as president-elect.

Petro wanted the meeting to be at his home in Chía, north of Bogotá.

Uribe, on the other hand, preferred his farm.

Since they did not agree, the meeting took place in Carvajal's office.

It was the first time they were in a room together, despite more than 30 years of political disagreements.

Petro wanted to speak to him alone, but Uribe refused.

Since he's involved in a witness-buying case, he always wants there to be a third person in his meetings, someone who can attest to what was said.

They agreed together that this person could be Carvajal, and so it was.

They chatted for 40 minutes in an office full of golf trophies, a drawing by Botero, two pictures of English hunting hunts, and a Chinese world map that occupies an entire stretcher table.

Former President Álvaro Uribe, meeting with Gustavo Petro and Alfonso Prada, in Bogotá, on June 29, 2022. Between Petro and Uribe, the lawyer Héctor Carvajal, host of the meeting. Álvaro Uribe Press

"The two seek to pacify the country," summarizes Carvajal behind his desk.

Petro wants to do it with total peace, his project of negotiating or subduing all the armed groups simultaneously.

Uribe once negotiated with paramilitaries, but waged a direct war with the guerrillas, and now, according to those who know him, he is concerned about any concessions that may be offered to criminals during negotiations.

He does not believe, and he has made it known in the meetings, that the same dialogue should be held with the ELN as with drug traffickers and that they use pardons and reduced sentences as if they were political prisoners.

"They are different paths, but both understand that it is necessary to reduce violence," adds the lawyer.

They also want to take this pacification to the personal level: no insults between them.

Uribe's defense of Petro the other day is the result of these meetings.

"They agree that we must remove the bad words from one and the other," continues Carvajal.

Having been the point of contact between the presidents has unleashed rumors about a possible election of the lawyer as Attorney General of the Nation.

He vehemently denies it: "That is gossip and people's envy."

The first and third meetings occurred at Petro's request.

The second, from Uribe.

In the third, in which soup was dined at Carvajal's house, Uribe brought José Félix Lafaurie, the representative of the Colombian ranchers, as a witness.

A conservative man, very distant from the left, it was very surprising that he was directly involved in the agrarian reform proposed by Petro.

It was the first sign that the left and the right were going to go hand in hand in these first months of government.

After that agreement on the purchase of land from ranchers, he received a call from Laura Sarabia, the head of the president's office, to announce that Petro, in the middle of the National Cattle Congress, was going to offer him to be a negotiator at the table with the THE N.

Lafaurie hesitated at that moment, he called his wife, the politician María Fernanda Cabal,

However, they phoned Uribe together and he was very clear:

—José Félix, you have to accept it.

“Uribe thinks that it is better to be close so that things go well.

He is a patriot, even if people don't believe it.

He thinks that you have to be, even more present than with Duque (the previous president, a dolphin of Uribe) ”, says Lafaurie.

She thinks that Uribe and Petro have hit it off for two things.

One, because with Petro it is easy to talk, he is someone who listens, something not easy to find among high positions.

"He's not a hostile guy," he says.

And two, Uribe likes "front" people, who he says things as they are.

In this there is always an indirect criticism of José Manuel Santos, Uribe's successor who later distanced himself from his mentor.

Uribismo often refers to him as a traitor who deceived Uribe.

For this reason, those close to him maintain, he prefers Petro to whom he said one thing and then did another.

In that third meeting, on the sofa, Uribe told Petro not to let the economy cool down, that it was not easy to reactivate it.

Petro asked him how he saw the health reform, on which Uribe had many observations.

He thought the preventive part was magnificent.

Later, the current president "told a story" about tourism, which was to serve as an alternative source of financing to fossil fuels.

“There was no agenda or conclusions.

There was nothing to agree on.

But this is going to bear fruit”, prophesies Lafaurie.

Álvaro Uribe, Miguel Uribe, Gustavo Petro, Óscar Pérez and Alfonso Prada, on September 27, 2022, at the Casa de Nariño. GOVERNMENT OF COLOMBIA

Apart from Uribe, Lafaurie believes that a political peace must be established in the country, not only with this former president, but also with others such as Gaviria or Santos.

“Confrontation no longer works in this country.

If Uribe gets involved in another controversy, this could turn out even worse."

In addition, he believes that opposing Petro is very different from doing it to Santos: “Petro is a guy who has been at odds with the establishment all his life.

He's been throwing stones at it.

Confronting it can be more costly for the institutional architecture than trying to find spaces where things can be discussed”.

Uribe is concerned about the way in which it will go down in history.

Of course, he doesn't want to come off as the first convicted president in more than half a century.

An accusation of buying witnesses weighs on him, in a very tangled case that began with his complaint to Iván Cepeda, a senator fully trusted by Petro.

The matter turned around and Uribe has ended up being prosecuted.

At 70 years old, he would not imagine being involved in a matter like this.

In some of the meetings, according to two different sources, Cepeda has been discussed, although it is not known in what terms.

Not only Petro has a lot at stake in the coming years, but also Uribe.

Álvaro Uribe, former president of Colombia, during an interview in September 2007 in New York (USA).

ANDREW HARRER (BLOOMBERG NEWS)

He was his adviser for seven years, and that is why José Obdulio Gaviria can guess Uribe's intentions to approach Petro, demonized by the right for two decades for having been a guerrilla member of the M-19.

José Obdulio considers a serious mistake, for example, the health reform, which he likens to one that Hugo Chávez made shortly after coming to power in Venezuela, without the comparison necessarily being exact.

"How to react to that?" He asks himself.

“With madness, with verbal confrontations, with street activist treatments?

Or trying to generate a majority so that democracy can work?

That's what Uribe wants."

That is not to say that the position is not critical.

“We are not trying to act with the typical totally unbridled Latin American reaction.

Nothing to revive the guerrilla or terrorist militancy of Petro (sic).

What is certain is that both are needed.

Petro knows that without the right and the liberals he will not achieve the changes he wants to make to the country, it will be difficult for him to achieve peace.

Uribe, at his lowest moment of popularity, reappears as a sensible man willing to build the country from the opposition.

Nobody imagined them shaking hands, but there they are, sitting on a sofa, chatting like two old friends.

A riddle.

Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia, during an interview in September 2022, in New York (USA).

Victor J. Blue (Bloomberg)

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