Gustavo Petro with the former ambassador of Colombia in Venezuela, Armando Benedetti.RR.SS @armandobenedetti
Armando Benedetti will take all his resentment to Rome.
The former ambassador to Venezuela, who was removed from that position by President Gustavo Petro last June, has been rescued from ostracism with a post created expressly.
Benedetti will be Colombia's ambassador to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
(FAO), a function that until now was fulfilled by the ambassador in Italy.
A position to which he accepted after starring in a soap opera that he ruminated on for months in silence, feeling betrayed and exiled in Caracas, and in which he even accused the president of consuming drugs, spoke of alleged illegal financing in the campaign and insulted Petro's number two, Laura Sarabia.
The episode ended with him and Sarabia, but the exit door that the president showed them when dismissing them became revolving.
She returned a few months ago, close to the president;
He does it now, although he continues to show himself as the greatly offended one: “I had to see a lot, not to say that I chose Petro.
So he deserved me whatever and this is not what I would have wanted, but it is the best.”
It is difficult to know the specific reason why Petro recovers Benedetti, since the only thing that has been made known is the appointment in a brief statement.
But if the president expected some type of gratitude or simply silence, that is not what he found this Wednesday.
While journalist Julio Sánchez Cristo was commenting on the news on his W Radio program, Benedetti began writing him WhatsApp messages that were read on the air: “Here there is only the story of a betrayal.
So leave the movie and leave the script that Laura makes for you.
If I had been there, none of all the inexperiences would have happened.”
This, with simultaneous translation, means that Benedetti is still licking the wounds of jealousy that caused his former subordinate to gain the president's trust.
To understand this story of jealousy we have to go back to the electoral campaign.
Petro, whom the traditional power considered a dangerous ex-guerrilla, knew that he could never win an election without a Trojan horse that knew how to move and make room for him among those elites who run the country economically, politically and socially.
Benedetti, an old fox of power, embraced the heat of a rising candidate and soon became his shadow.
As campaign manager he opened doors for Petro that surely would never have opened on their own.
Meanwhile, in a discreet background, Sarabia - Benedetti's personal secretary for years - squared the impossible agenda of the two that took the strange couple of politicians throughout the country in a campaign that managed to allay the fears generated by the leader of the left.
Their union was a success.
With the victory, Benedetti already saw himself, at least, as a minister.
His appointment as Venezuelan ambassador seemed like a way to distance him from power, with very little payment for the work done.
But that wasn't what hurt him the most.
What he could not bear was that Sarabia became Petro's right-hand man.
In some leaked audios of those crazy days that ended with the two out of the Government, Benedetti insults Sarabia with phrases like these: “You are worthless”, “you have behaved like a son of a bitch after everything I did for you” , “you are there for me, motherfucker, for me!”
In the recordings you can hear him losing his temper.
Benedetti feels that Sarabia has betrayed him and that he kept the position that he so desired, and demands that he return him to Bogotá with a position close to the president.
The resentment does not seem to have lessened over the months.
Not even that kind of repentance with which he then tried to settle the controversy with a phrase that seemed taken from the end of a bolero had an effect: “I got carried away by rage and drinking.”
This Wednesday, Benedetti accused Sánchez Cristo of working at the dictates of Laura herself and continued to claim the president's victory.
Not only that, he once again expressed his conviction that if he were the one to accompany Petro, the Government would do better.
There was not a word of gratitude for an appointment that has raised blisters in many sectors and that could once again change Benedetti's judicial horizon.
The proceedings against him by the Supreme Court of Justice could now be sent to the Prosecutor's Office, although as with so many things there is debate between lawyers.
If there are changes, this will delay any decision and could gain time towards the prescription of the causes.
Benedetti, in what he considers a judicial persecution, is pending at least five trials for crimes such as influence peddling, illicit enrichment, money laundering or threats to officials.
The criticism, on the other hand, intensifies.
To begin with, the body of career diplomatic officials expressed their discontent with an appointment that they consider inexplicable: “Benedetti does not meet all the formal requirements to serve as Ambassador, a position for which the applicant is required to prove mastery of a foreign language. diplomatic use other than that of Spain or the country of destination, a situation that in this case is not met.
Additionally, he does not belong to the Diplomatic Career, he has not entered through a public competition, he has not gone through the hierarchical process based on merit and he has not had to demonstrate a process of continuous specialization in diplomatic and consular positions.
The opposition, of course, has come out in force, but even part of the president's followers still do not understand why they should keep alive a politician as explosive as he is astute who has known how to move as he pleases in Uribismo, Santismo and now does in Petrism.
Rome awaits a Benedetti who is still hurt.
He and Sarabia are once again colleagues in the Government.
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