President Gustavo Petro’s speech is one of the sharpest attacks on press freedom in recent memory. In the midst of his government’s worst scandal and before accusations from Armando Benedetti, who revealed in an audio recording that 15,000 million had entered the election campaign and that what he knows a new 8,000 trial could be launched, the President decided, flipping the cake around and throwing them out and blaming the media.
“They just searched other offices of the President’s Office. SEMANA commands and the CTI obeys,” he said. Without mentioning it in detail, the President refers to the judicial inspection that took place this Wednesday morning on the 13th floor of the Dian, where apparently an intelligence office of the President of the Republic works.
Portal/Luisa Gonzalez – Photo: PortalA group from the Anti-Corruption Directorate, as part of an investigation into illegal wiretapping, came to this location to define in detail what activities are taking place in this room intended for the security of the President. It is believed that they made a mirror copy of Laura Sarabia’s ex-nanny Marelbys Meza’s mobile phone there without court approval.
Marches in support of the Gustavo Petro government and the reforms – Photo: GUILLERMO TORRES REINADuring his speech, Gustavo Petro found himself surrounded by two very representative women from the government. On the one hand the Minister of Mines Irene Vélez and on the other hand Vice President Francia Márquez.
Referring to the vice president, he also made allusions that amounted to a misrepresentation of the work of journalists. “Here we saw a press that hates the vice president because of the color of her skin… Do the Colombian people want a Colombia that goes back into slavery and hates people just because they’re black?” he said.
“Could it be that I’m being left alone?” he asked himself during his speech, while those present applauded and shouted. “After April 19, the government has the opportunity today to change Colombia. The change is the decision.” he told his excited audience.
Watch Gustavo Petro’s speech
“Here it is demonstrated, that’s actually the case.” Proof… The Plaza de Bolívar is full. “The seventh race is full,” said the President.
The demonstrations this Wednesday, June 7, called on unions, political sectors and citizens to march for social reforms proposed by the national government. In the midst of a deep government crisis and as a president’s favor waned, supporters took to the streets to support his government.
Banners against the media had been in the march since the morning hours. “The silent, destructive, unpredictable, perverse and satanic power of the media gives the working class the feeling and belief that it is better to be a slave than a dignified worker.” The banner says it’s probably owned by one of the participating unions.
Speech by President Gustavo Petro in Carrera Séptima – Photo: Esteban Vega La RottaFinally, the poster again compares the media to the devil: “Only Satan does, and we are defenseless in the face of such outrage.” The cartel directly attacks Caracol, RCN, W Radio, Caracol Radio, RedMás and SEMANA.
It’s not the first time the President has attacked the press in his administration. The Foundation for Freedom of the Press (Flip) has issued multiple statements warning the President about the war on the media and the impact his words are having on his supporters.
President Gustavo Petro in his speech. – Photo: PresidencyIn a recent interview with María Isabel Rueda, Flip director Jonathan Bock made it clear that the president must respect the press. “I trust President Petro understands press freedom as a democratic institution, but his vision of a particular sector of journalism implies a confrontational position.. I don’t think it has to be like this. This confrontation wears down journalism and of course power and can ultimately lead to delegitimization. Therefore, it is a call to understand and respect journalism in general, beyond the specifics of the messages that have been tens of not only on Twitter, but also in his speeches and interviews in which he speaks about his own journalistic history generalizes the media, which is not his job,” he said.
Portal/Luisa Gonzalez – Photo: PortalIn addition, he added that “threats against journalists in general have increased.” And there has been no institutional response to protect them, particularly in regions where there are no guarantees for journalism to be practiced. Spreading the message that this is an anti-government journalistic story cannot be accepted as this is the same argument officials at various levels use to attack journalists at the local or departmental level.”
The journalist asked him for a recent statement from the organization in which he claims this “Fueling the discourse that journalism is antagonistic opens the floodgates to the criminalization of the media.”
Bock assured that officials had done so “A duty of respect for journalism, for other voices when they are critical, even hateful, or officials find intolerable. But it is also a message that journalism cannot be understood as an enemy, but that, in its plurality of voices, it is part of this control exercise against power; and that it permanently builds the approach to the truth.”
The latest indication of this danger came in connection with the persecution of journalist Camila Zuluaga, who denounced the recording of a video in which she was walking her baby.
From the podium, the President called for approval of his reforms. “We ask you: approve the Colombian people…this is a popular mandate…Let’s strive for decent work so that every old man in our country gets a pension bonus,” he said.
As is well known, after the scandal caused by the Benedetti audios, Congress decided to freeze the study of these projects for this legislative period.
The President spoke again of the so-called soft coup. “Once the reforms are nullified, they plan to destroy the president on the impeachment commission to do the same thing that was done in Peru, which was to jail the president and replace the government with a new president not dated people is elected.” . It’s called a soft coup, it’s a coup, it’s a coup against the will of the people,” Petro said as his supporters cheered him.
After he cracked down on Congress, criticism of Petro turned to pollsters and those who disseminate polls. According to the president, the poor results he has had on these measurements recently are “a strategy” to “destroy” support for his government.
“They took some lying polls from us. The real polls show us that we are still the majority of the population in Colombia. They adopted these lies because there is a strategy, a strategy that we need to understand and fight. They want to destroy the government’s public support for a unitary government, they want to isolate the Petro government from its people, they want to stir up distrust among the grassroots,” he said.
The President has vehemently appealed to the Republic’s Congress to approve the bills submitted by his government.
“We ask you to approve the reforms that guarantee the rights of the Colombian people. This is not a violent demand, this is not an armed demand, this is a popular demand. emerging from the bowels of the excluded territory. It is a popular mandate, we can discuss it, we can accept changes, but not one that accepts the possibility of guaranteeing people’s rights.”
He assured that the goal was clear: to undo the government’s reforms in favor of “big business”.