Gustavo Petro takes office as Colombia’s first left-wing president: “Latin American unity cannot be rhetoric”

Gustavo Petro took office this Sunday as the first president of the Left in Colombian historyin front of thousands of people. The 62-year-old former senator was invested by the head of Congress Roy Barreras during a ceremony at the Plaza de Bolívar in the center Bogotawhich was attended by nine leaders and several international delegations.

The new president received the presidential sash and sworn in environmentalist Francia Márquez as Colombia’s first Afro-presidential vice president. In his inaugural address, he proposed ending the world’s failed “war on drugs” and moving towards “strong consumption prevention policies” in the developed world.

“The time has come to adopt a new international convention that recognizes that the war on drugs has failed,” he said. Gustavo Petro. In addition, he questioned “four decades” of drug enforcement prosecutions that encouraged USA.

“The War on Drugs has strengthened the Mafia and weakened the States,” he said, adding that “a million Hispanics” have been killed during this time and 70,000 North Americans “are dying of overdoses every year.”

Petro, who came to power thanks to the unpopular Ivan Duke, will govern for four years a country of 50 million that has entered the orbit of the left for the first time in the region. To do this, he has assembled a cabinet of various trends, with women at the head of several portfolios and a reform mission that will begin its legislative course on Monday.

On Unity in Latin America

The president also assured during his inauguration that “Latin American unity cannot be rhetoric”, for which he called for unification so that the region would be strong in a “complex world”.

“Today we must be more together and united than ever. As Simon Bolivar once said: “Union must save us, just as division will destroy us if it comes between us.” Let the separation Latin America. But Latin American unity cannot be rhetoric, just speech,” Petro said in his speech.

He added that it was “time for Latin America to leave behind blocs, groups and ideological divisions to work together.”

“Let’s understand once and for all that we are united much more than what divides us. And that together we are stronger. Let’s unite our heroes like Bolivar, San Martin, Artigas, Sucre and O’Higgins. “This is not utopia or romanticism,” he added.

The president has proposed narrowing the gap between rich and poor, one of the largest on the continent, along with Brazil, by expanding access to credit, subsidies and public education.

After the destruction pandemicthe economy is recovering its growth, although inflation, which reached 10.2% in July on an interannual basis, unemployment (11.7%) and poverty, which affects 39% of the population, cloud the picture.

Petro to resume diplomatic and commercial relations with the government Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela, interrupted since 2019, and will seek support and headquarters to resume peace talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN), the last recognized guerrilla unit in the country.

Gulf Clan announces ceasefire

The Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC), also known as Clan del Golfo, announced this Sunday a “unilateral cessation of offensive hostilities” to seek “ways of peace” in the face of a “different era” that has opened up in Colombia since accession. Gustavo Petro.

“The regime of the outgoing President (Ivan) Duque (sic) is finally ending,” begins the statement of this group, the largest criminal group in the country, where they assure that the government that ends today “is the representative of all things that must change in country to achieve an elusive peace.”

Thus, they hope that from this Sunday “a different era will begin for our troubled homeland”, in which they will cancel “all extreme measures” that they had to “carry out”, and decree “a unilateral cessation of offensive hostilities”. as an expression of good will with the Government that is starting”.

(According to AFP and EFE)