Laura Sarabia, Geraldine Fernández and the difficult days

At the same time that the young illustrator Geraldine Fernández confessed on Caracol Radio that her participation in the film by Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki

The Boy and the Heron

had been an invention that had gotten out of hand;

Laura Sarabia, Gustavo Petro's closest collaborator, assured the Prosecutor's Office that she had never given the order for her son's nanny to undergo a polygraph for the theft of a suitcase full of money in her house. .

The two cases, which only have in common the day of the statement and the monumental noise they generated on social networks, portray a sunken 30-year-old woman -Fernández, cornered by her lies- and a reborn 30-year-old woman -Sarabia , back to the center of Colombian power-.

The illustrator, who is going through her worst hours these days, could take note: sometimes there are falls that instead of going down are up.

Sarabia is an example of this.

The polygraph case may haunt Sarabia but she has already been acquitted by the president.

Petro's considered right-hand man was barely three months out of the Government since his dismissal, and people close to the cabinet assure that he never actually left at all.

Last August she was appointed director of the Department of Social Prosperity (DPS), a position that comes to the councils of ministers and manages a budget of 6.75 billion dollars, including subsidies for the poorest.

His image descending from the steps of the presidential plane on an official trip to China in October showed that the scandal had not undermined his power, he was still the person closest to the head of state.

Only in the last few days, in addition to her duties, Sarabia led the meeting to try to save the celebration of the Pan American Games in Barranquilla and chaired a meeting with representatives of the banking sector, a multiplied presence that has made her the most public face of the Government.

This Thursday, he had to go to the Prosecutor's Office to testify about the alleged abuse of power against the nanny Marelbys Meza.

She arrived confident and eager to talk, nothing like the silence in which she surrounded herself when the scandal that would lead to her dismissal began.

For the first time, she spoke publicly and forcefully about a process that became so convoluted that it caused the biggest crisis of the Petro Government in the first year of her mandate.

“I did not order, I could not do it and it was not my initiative to take a polygraph,” she said before entering the courthouse.

Those days of madness that ended with the president dismissing two of his most trusted people - his chief of staff and ambassador Armando Benedetti - began with Meza's complaint on the cover of Semana magazine

.

The nanny accused Sarabia's security team of having subjected her to a polygraph in a basement of the Casa de Nariño for being the main suspect in the theft of a suitcase full of money - the exact amount of which has never been established - in the house of her boss.

The Prosecutor's Office entered the case ex officio and discovered that the babysitter's phone had also been illegally intercepted.

Sarabia, considered by those who know her as methodical and strict, was on a tightrope.

The final blow was given to Benedetti, when it became known that her hand was behind Meza's appearances in the media.

He and Sarabia had been boss and subordinate for years, but power had separated them.

The young woman's promotion to the president's side and Benedetti's appointment as ambassador to Venezuela unleashed the politician's anger, who felt exiled from the hard core and plotted revenge from a distance.

The president was forced to fire them both, although he said goodbye to her with “my dear official” and dedicated words of affection and affection to her.

If Benedetti was not heard from again, other than because of some pending court dates, Sarabia continued to have a direct line with Petro.

The day he recovered it for the Government, the president sent the message that he was not willing to do without his greatest support in a cabinet in which the replacements overlap - he has dismissed 11 ministers since he came to power in August 2022 —.

Despite the criticism and the possible political cost that reopening the palace door could have for him, Sarabia regained expanded power, even increasing his public appearances.

The numerous questions that the polygraph case still hides remain unresolved, but they do not seem to scare the director of the DPS.

Her defense said at the end of the hearing at the Prosecutor's Office that “there is not a shadow of doubt in her conduct” and Sarabia trusted that “upright and dignified” justice will help her turn what she considers “a bitter page.” in their life.

Some difficult days.

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