Virtue or defect, Gustavo Petro is not a man who keeps his opinions to himself.
The president of Colombia finds it difficult to remain silent.
It is difficult to find an event—national or international—about which he does not speak out.
Three recent examples: he condemned Israel's actions in Gaza, causing a diplomatic crisis;
declared his support for the Peronist Sergio Massa before the Argentine presidential elections, marking a distance with the winner Javier Milei;
and supported Bernardo Arévalo to assume the head of state in Guatemala, in the face of judicial decisions that seemed to hinder him.
Petro based a good part of his popularity on his ability to take a stand, read situations and oppose injustices.
Precisely for this reason, his silence in the face of the disqualification that the Venezuelan authorities imposed on María Corina Machado is striking, just when she seeks to compete for the presidency with Nicolás Maduro and after the Colombian president has systematically criticized the disqualifications of elected officials or candidates for office. popularly elected positions.
The secrecy of the president is striking.
Human Rights Watch sent him a letter requesting that he demonstrate against the opposition leader's disqualification.
The letter was signed by Juanita Goebertus, director for America of the organization, who expressed to EL PAÍS her concern about the silence of the Casa de Nariño.
“It is curious that he prefers to remain silent on this issue because, in addition, he has a strict relationship with him [Petro].
This is a sanction for a person who aspires to public office, something similar to what happened to him.
I believe that he sends a message of incoherence in the defense of human rights.
"He was very vehement with the dismissal of Pedro Castillo, in Peru, and, on the contrary, he has remained silent at this moment, as if ideological preferences took precedence over his commitment to the defense of the right to vote and participation," he said in a statement. telephone conversation.
Goebertus is referring to the 14-year disqualification and dismissal that the Attorney General's Office imposed on Petro in 2013, when he was mayor of Bogotá.
A precautionary measure from the Inter-American Commission returned it to the city government and a ruling from the Inter-American Court, in 2020, ordered the Colombian State to modify its laws so that no administrative authority can remove an official elected by popular vote from office. .
Paradoxically, the precedent on which the Inter-American Court based itself was the case of another Venezuelan opponent, Leopoldo López, whom the Comptroller's Office of that country had disqualified for 3 years in 2004. Before the Inter-American Court ruled on his case on the merits, Petro constantly alluded to what López experienced to support his argument that the Attorney General's Office had violated his political rights.
“My case is like that of Leopoldo López,” he stated on one occasion.
If you want to compare, my case is like that of Leopoldo López.
A comptroller tried to disqualify him with a fine and the IACHR ruled in his favor https://t.co/XtVZmNFpKL
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) December 5, 2016
Ending this type of sanctions is a crusade that the president undertook.
In his country he has openly disapproved of them, even when those affected are from ideological shores opposite to his own.
In November 2021, the Colombian Comptroller's Office sanctioned Sergio Fajardo, in his capacity as former governor of Antioquia, as one of those responsible for the failures in the Hidroituango hydroelectric project, which delayed the inauguration of the mega-project and, according to the entity, had generated damage. for 4.3 trillion pesos (more than 1,000 million dollars).
The sanction threatened to leave Fajardo out of the 2022 presidential elections. Petro reiterated his argument to defend the rights of his competitor.
“What is against Sergio Fajardo is an administrative sanction and a sanction of this type, as ordered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, does not produce political inability,” he stated.
He took the same attitude in September of last year, after the National Electoral Council revoked the candidacy of Rodolfo Hernández for the Governor of Santander.
Hernández - Petro's rival in the second round of the 2022 presidential elections - had three disciplinary sanctions imposed by the Attorney General's Office and the electoral court decided to remove him from the elections.
“With the case of Rodolfo Hernández, my rival in the presidential race, the thesis of removing political rights through administrative sanctions in open contempt of the IACHR ruling, which is mandatory, has been revived,” he declared.
The situation is the same as that experienced by Machado, who comfortably won, with 92.5% of the vote, the Venezuelan opposition primaries that were held in October.
It was a bittersweet victory.
The opposition leader knew that she was conditioned.
Four months earlier, in June, the Comptroller General of Venezuela had notified her that she could not participate in elections or hold public office for 15 years.
Her punishment is based on a previous sanction, from 2015, when the same institution disqualified her for 12 months for not including food vouchers in her asset declaration.
There was a small hope that Machado and his followers clung to: that Chavismo would respect the agreements it reached with the opposition on the Caribbean island of Barbados and guarantee “the right of each political actor to select its candidate for the elections.” presidential elections freely.”
But it was a fantasy.
The Supreme Court of Justice, on January 26, ratified the decision of the Comptroller's Office and closed the possibilities for the 56-year-old industrial engineer to appear on the card.
The United States quickly warned that it will resume the economic sanctions it lifted a few months ago if the regime does not reverse the disqualification.
The warning, with a threatening tone, has little chance of shaking any fiber in a Government that celebrated a quarter of a century in power this Thursday.
Much of the international community has turned to reject the abuse of Chavista authority.
However, Petro has chosen to remain silent.
The only time he referred to the issue was in June of last year, through his X account. On that occasion, without directly mentioning Machado, he said that no administrative authority “should take away political rights from any citizen.” ”.
That was it.
By then the primaries had not yet been held and dialogues between the ruling party and the Venezuelan opposition were underway.
Getting detractors out of the way is a recurring weapon of Chavismo.
Since 2002, the Access to Justice organization has counted 1,400 citizens disqualified from holding public office through decisions of judicial and administrative authorities.
Among them are Leopoldo López, former opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles and Machado.
The figure is overwhelming.
However, in this case Petro has things to lose if he risks equating his case with Machado's.
This is explained by Sergio Guzmán, director of the consulting firm Colombia Risk Analysis, who considers that several of the president's priorities depend on his relationship with the Maduro Government.
“Preserving the integrity of the negotiations with the ELN and Nueva Marquetalia, which both operate in Venezuela, is key to their plans to achieve Total Peace.
He has also proposed not exploring oil, which has led Ecopetrol to consider doing business in Venezuela and that is why it would not be strategic to contradict the decisions of that country's regime.
He adds that Petro's benevolence is evident when he “criticizes other left-wing leaders.”
“Instead of being a defender of democracy, he seems more like an accomplice of Maduro,” he points out.
The Colombian president did not hesitate in his reproaches to Israel.
His conviction to defend his principles, even if this brought undesired consequences, was applauded by his followers, including abroad.
That coherence is being called into question with his silence regarding the disqualification of María Corina Machado.
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