“They caught them red-handed”: Federico Gutiérrez asks Gustavo Petro for explanations

The candidate for the presidency of Colombia of the Team for Colombia coalition, Federico Gutiérrez, made a series of accusations against the Historical Pact and Gustavo Petro to the media, minutes before appearing for the cultural debate at the Bogotá International Book Fair, to which he was invited with the rest of the applicants to same charge.

On the outskirts of Corferias, Fico said he wanted to alert the country to “a very serious situation that is happening and that adds to the intention of the other campaign in which they seek benefits for the corrupt and the violent in exchange for votes.” He assured that Senator-elect Piedad Córdoba had visited three extraditable prisoners in La Picota prison to offer the above.

Among those deprived of liberty that Córdoba would have visited, according to Gutiérrez, were Francisco Javier Zuluaga Lindo, alias Gordo Lindo, and José Leonardo Muñoz Martínez, alias Douglas, former member of “La Oficina, the criminal structure I fought so much in Medellín.” Gutiérrez added that these prisoners would also have been offered to abolish extradition if Gustavo Petro achieved the presidency of Colombia.

The candidate demanded a clarification from Gustavo Petro about “whether he will continue to use Piedad Córdoba and his brother as fuses, knowing that it is a clear instruction since the campaign. He's the one who has to answer to the country. Or are you going to say again that this was an entrapment? This is no encampment: those appointments took place, those meetings were held and there is still much more to be known.”

Federico Gutiérrez suggested that the Historical Pact was caught “red-handed.” He emphasized that, “the corrupt, the violent, the drug traffickers and the extraditable must be in jail”, that we should not negotiate with them and that dialogue should be “with Colombians, with people who have no jobs, with people who suffer violence. With the victims, not the perpetrators.”

Candidate Gustavo Petro surprised this Wednesday morning by asking Piedad Córdoba, senator-elect of the Historical Pact, to suspend her campaign activities while solving her judicial inconveniences.

“I ask Piedad Córdoba to suspend all its activities within the campaign, until it can resolve, hopefully, favorably, the legal syndications made to it,” said the aspirant Petro through his Twitter account.

According to the newspaper El Tiempo, the decision of the Historical Pact would be motivated by alleged visits to prisons such as La Picota Prison, where his brother Álvaro Freddy Córdoba is being held, and by a letter that reached the campaign by a group of prisoners presided over by the condemned paramilitary Hector Germán Buitrago, alias Martín Llanos, in which they called for 'social inclusion'. The letter would have reached the community through Cordoba itself.

In addition, candidate Petro published a seven-point manifesto for a clean campaign, which apparently will be the parameters that the entire Historical Pact will follow until the first presidential round, on May 29.

The postulates include rejecting the dirty campaign, not disqualifying or assaulting adversaries, not using candidates' personal information, fighting fake news, repudiating the use of trolls and bots, refusing vandalism on public roads and not receiving money from illicit activities.

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