President Iván Duque launched an indirect criticism of candidate Gustavo Petro during one of his speeches at the Summit of the Americas taking place this week in Los Angeles.
Duque was participating in the Forum for the Americas and was asked about how he sees the future of the relationship between Colombia and the United States with the change of government that the country will experience starting on August 7, to which he replied that restructuring the binational bond would be “shooting oneself in the foot.”
“I have always believed that if it is not broken, why fix it? I wonder whyWhy should someone try to destroy a two-sided relationship?l in which we are celebrating 200 years of this bipartisan and bicameral relationship”, affirmed the Executive.
The Summit of the Americas brings together 23 heads of state of the continent with the aim of sealing a pact for migration and defining the environmental and energy transition goals to achieve ecological sustainability in the region.
That appointment, however, is marked by political issues, such as the debate on not inviting Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela and the contest for the House of Nariño, which is in its final stretch to elect Iván Duque’s successor, between the senator Gustavo Petro and the former mayor of Bucaramanga Rodolfo Hernandez.
In the middle of the campaign, Petro, the candidate of the Historical Pact, has said that he will review the free trade agreements that Colombia has with its allies and has also outlined the possibility of rethinking the link with the White House.
On this subject, Iván Duque affirmed that “if someone wants to destroy it, well he would be shooting himself in the foot and that person is just going to destroy things that have worked so well. The evidence we have clearly shows that we must maintain this bilateral policy, enrich it, and it must continue”.
It must be said that Senator Petro has held meetings with US businessmen and politicians, although despite these he maintains his hypothesis that it is necessary to rethink certain issues of the relations that the Head of State has traced with commercial allies.
Given this, the outgoing president stated that “we are in a second round of elections and it is the people of Colombia who will have to follow the debate between two very different models. One that promotes expropriation and that wants the State to be the one that drives the market and the model to protect and attract investment and generate stability through that investment so that the public and private sectors can work hand in hand.”
The quarrels between President Iván Duque and candidate Gustavo Petro They have been a constant for the last four years. They two, even, were the ones who contested the second round of the 2018 presidential elections in which Duque won.