Petro calls for respect for his private life and condemns transphobic attacks over a video in Panama

Gustavo Petro has asked for respect for his private life this Wednesday. The Colombian president has reacted in this way to a video in which he is supposedly seen walking hand in hand with a young woman through the streets of the historic centre of Panama where he went, along with a dozen other heads of state, to the inauguration of the new president of that country, José Raul Mulino. The recording has gone viral in the last 48 hours and has unleashed a wave of transphobia. Social media users and even journalists have claimed, without proof, that the woman who appears in the video was transgender.

Petro has been silent for two days, despite the fact that he has received thousands of mentions on his X account regarding this matter. This has made Tuesday a difficult day at the Casa de Nariño, the presidential residence. There were closed-door meetings and speculation about what was to come. It was obvious, some advisers thought, that the president should respond to an issue that everyone has been referring to, especially in private messages. From people inside and outside the government. “I have always considered that privacy is the “last ratio” of freedom, the last trench of being free, and I will maintain this principle until I write about myself or die. But these thousands of transphobic messages that have exploded in the hands of a right-wing society, deeply exclusive, ignorant and discriminatory, must be rejected by the president,” Petro wrote on X, where he has 7.5 million followers.

“Every progressive knows that human beings are equal and that the fight for that equality implies physical and mental emancipation and, therefore, no one who considers themselves human can generalize transphobia in weak minds or slavery and discrimination. That action does not express animalism but brutality. That is why they murder the different and by the millions. That is why Nazis existed and exist. I am heterosexual, but you will never hear or read a transphobic word from me. Because not only would I cease to be a man, but human,” the message ends.

Petro’s private life has been the subject of speculation since his time as Mayor of Bogotá in 2012. There are dozens of apocryphal stories circulating about him in the circles of power in Bogotá, the capital. These rumors extend to his wife, Verónica Alcocer, now the first lady. His absences from cabinet meetings, which have ended up being led by Laura Sarabia, his number two, or the surprise cancellation of his agenda as president have given rise to interpretations. Journalist María Jimena Duzán made public a letter in which she asked him if he had any addiction. Petro replied, hours later, that his only dependence was on coffee.

Some stories are repeated over and over about the people around him. It was said that the president did not completely break up with Armando Benedetti, his campaign manager, because he had videos that could destroy his career. Now the same is said about Sarabia. These are the two people closest to him in the last three years, with whom he has spent the most time alone. Petro does not have many friends, he is not very social. Sometimes he hangs out with Hollman Morris, director of RTVC, the public media system. Little else. Petro jealously guards everything related to his private life and now he has asked that no one meddle in it. Behind closed doors, the president’s life concerns only him.

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