Gustavo Petro was locked in his office on Tuesday morning when his team sent him a statement from the Prosecutor's Office: Álvaro Uribe is going to be called to trial for procedural fraud and bribery of witnesses. The president of Colombia did not overreact. Shortly afterward he put on the black cap with which he now goes everywhere and went to the military airport, where he boarded the presidential plane heading to Caracas. Nicolás Maduro was waiting for him at the Miraflores Palace, who received him with a white cap out of deference to his guest. The day passed between allusions to Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the politician murdered on this same day in 1948, the Venezuelan elections about which Petro has more than one concern, and the assault on the Mexican embassy in Quito. The Uribe case was just a background lullaby.
Petro's secrecy on this matter is a mystery. Few know what he really thinks about the possibility that Uribe, during his term, could sit in a dock and end up convicted, something not improbable if he considers the evidence against him. It would be the first time that a Colombian president suffered such humiliation. Uribe and Petro have met several times in the last year and a half in private, although with witnesses. Uribe is obsessed with someone speaking alone with him and then slandering him. He always wants more than one person in the room to be in his presence. So at the meetings or dinners where the two presidents met there was someone else. There, the name of Iván Cepeda was mentioned, the senator close to Petro whom Uribe tried to entangle in a case of buying witnesses that in the end turned against him and has him in a precarious situation today. In the autumn of his life, when he should be writing books and giving lectures, the former president finds himself bogged down in this judicial process that keeps a man who doesn't sleep much at night.
Petro needs Uribe, or at least that is his feeling. He believes that to implement total peace in the country – an extensive peace, which is not only armed but also solves the root problems of education and poverty – he needs it. The former president continues to have a lot of popularity in many areas of the country and has the loyalty of the armed forces and the police. The Uribista mentality infiltrated the barracks and police stations as Chavismo did in Venezuela. The current president would like to have him by his side and that is why he has been magnanimous towards him, he has not insulted or vilified him in public lately, he has not taken advantage of his status as head of state to take revenge for certain issues of the past. The possibility that the Petro president could stop the accusation against Uribe is very complex in the very guaranteeing Colombian judicial system. Even if Cepeda wanted to drop the charges or give up seeking a conviction, the issue is in the hands of the Prosecutor's Office and this snowball cannot be stopped. Iván Duque tried with a prosecutor friend of his, Francisco Barbosa, but two circuit judges refused and then the Superior Court of Bogotá reaffirmed that they had to move forward because there was enough evidence.
The legal-political architecture is very limited. Cepeda sinks into a thick silence when he is told about the possibility of pardoning Uribe – for that a prior conviction would be necessary – with the purpose of moving forward with the national agreement that he defends as a solution to the ills that afflict the Republic. In that imaginary, in 2026 an entente of the left, center and right would govern the country that would lay the foundations for a social peace that would encompass the rest of the century. Cepeda has convinced José Félix Lafaurie, the president of the ranchers, that this is the most promising solution for the nation. Lafaurie is close to Uribe and is the most direct line between him and Petro. His wife is one of the most important right-wing political figures, María Fernanda Cabal, who has presidential aspirations. That does not mean that her husband does not have them and that they may end up competing with each other, a circumstance that has surely never occurred in the political history of any country. He would be favorable to this national understanding; she does not.
Surely everything is simpler. The journalist Daniel Coronell – with whom Uribe maintains a deep personal enmity – and criminal lawyers who have been consulted by Time They believe that the case is too strong against Uribe, so the simplest tactic for his defense would be to delay the process until the statute of limitations is reached. There is a lot of debate about what the exact date of extinction of the case would be, nothing unusual in a country where every person in a suit you pass on the street has studied Law. Will this happen in just a year and a half or three? Would it be a way out for Uribe? Furthermore, would it be a worthy act?
Coronell drove and directed a podcast titled Uribe Cornered, which in the long run is proving prophetic. The president who served two presidential terms, between 2002 and 2010, and who would have served three if he had been constitutionally allowed – it is assumed that he would have won – has less and less escape. Several lessons can be drawn from his situation. He put the FARC in check with a frontal war and the successor he appointed, Juan Manuel Santos, concluded that offensive with a peace process that demobilized the most brutal guerrilla in Latin America. Uribe could have embraced those dialogues and made them his own, worn that medal, but he was radically opposed, debased public opinion and attacked Santos without mercy. He heeled over when there was no need. He then felt that he needed to make amends and never wanted to abandon either his party or its influence. He thought that total power would pat his head again, he would honor him again. But the reality is that he did not know how to leave, some conclude. And this has ended up locking him in a labyrinth. Petro, who now hides his head with a cap, watches from above, calculating the move. Uribe's future may be just that, Uribe's, but also the direction of an entire nation.
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