The judicial via crucis of the Petro begins

The president has proposed that 2024 be the year of his Government's comeback. Gustavo Petro has given instructions that the projects that were left half-finished last year finally come to fruition. Even in the Nariño Palace, the presidential residence, there is talk of a remodeling of his Cabinet—at the end of January—, of two or three changes, which would lay the foundations for this rebirth, after a 2023 with many ups and downs. Petro and his entourage do not buy the catastrophic discourse of the opposition or some renowned international media, but they are aware that the successes that were proposed at the beginning of the mandate have not been achieved. However, this resurgence of this beginning of January is going to be overshadowed by the person who has done the most damage to him: his immediate family. His first son, Nicolás Petro, the product of his first of three marriages, attends the arraignment hearing this Thursday in which he will be called to trial by the Prosecutor's Office, which charges him with the crimes of money laundering and illicit enrichment. .

This moment had to come sooner or later. It was a planned crisis, a controlled explosion. Petro, on his day, was magnanimous when he said that he hoped that the full weight of justice would fall against his son and even against his brother, entangled in another different judicial process. But there is no doubt that it will have a political cost. In the Palace he has worked on damage containment that will now be shown to have an effect. At first, Nicolás collaborated with the Prosecutor's Office and spoke of alleged irregular financing in the campaign – a matter on which he also spitefully addressed what was his number twoArmando Benedetti—, which set off all the alarms in the presidential circle.

In August, Petro tried to visit his son after some of his statements to the Prosecutor's Office. When he was on his way, he told him not to show up, he didn't want to see him. Days before, the president had said in an interview that he had not raised Nicolás, which is true. When he was born, he was in prison and when he left prison he met another woman and started another family. Nicolás felt that sentence like a dagger, according to those who know him. The relationship was broken. It had to be the birth of a baby, Nicolás's son, that helped rebuild the difficult relationship that is inherently that of parents and children. The president, happy to be a grandfather for the third time, approached Nicolás again, which coincided with his decision not to collaborate with the Prosecutor's Office.

That leaves Nicolás's ex-partner, Day Vásquez, alone in a corner, the one who uncovered this case when she found out that Nicolás was unfaithful to her with her best friend, Laura Ojeda, with whom he just had the child. Vásquez remains faithful in his story to the Prosecutor's Office, in summary, that as a couple they received money from businessmen, some of dubious origin, for the campaign of the then candidate that never reached the coffers, but rather they kept it along the way. . Investigators have recounted a life of excesses by Vásquez and Nicolás that is exaggerated if one considers the amounts they managed, but that at least demonstrates that they lived beyond their means.

Soap opera aside, Nicolás's is going to be one of the trials of the year. Those who wait for the president around the corner with the stick have the possibility of discrediting him. Many things can be said about Petro, his enemies concede, unless he is corrupt. The president has demonstrated a firmness in politics that some consider dangerous. Someone's questioning of his blood, no matter how far removed they may have been from his upbringing, is a blow whose consequences are not yet known.

It is not the first time that the son of a president takes advantage of his father's position to enrich himself and it surely will not be the last, but it falls on Petro like a biblical curse. His political career has been built on the idea of ​​someone of one piece, incorruptible, firm in his positions to the exhaustion of his opponents. The example, given what happened, has not spread to those around him. Friendly fire is what the president has suffered the most in his year and a half at the head of the country. Once this trial is over, then that of his brother awaits him, accused of promising prison reductions to prisoners with the consent of the president, and surely that of Laura Sarabia, right now the most important person in the Government, after Petro, obviously. The president wants to put his mandate into orbit, as long as he clears these dark clouds.

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