The Puebla Group requests that the case of Nicolás Petro not become “a political weapon against democratic institutions”

Ernesto Samper and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, members of the Puebla Group, in Madrid, on November 18, 2022.Europa Press News (Europa Press via Getty Images)

The scandal that has embarrassed Colombian President Gustavo Petro, in which his eldest son and political ally, Nicolás, accepted that his father’s campaign received financing outside the reported books, mobilized one of the most visible forums on the left. latin american. And he did it in favor of democratic institutions and in defense of the president. The Puebla Group, a forum of progressive leaders, will publish this Wednesday a communication that EL PAÍS reveals exclusively, in which it states that “serious irregularities are taking place through the implementation of this case, with the specific purpose of harming President Petro ”. He also recalls that the leftist leader has promised “to provide all the guarantees so that the process continues its course.”

Led by former presidents José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (Spain), Ernesto Samper (Colombia) and Rafael Correa (Ecuador), the letter that gathers 38 signatures denounces that the scandal has been used in a “soft coup” against the Colombian president, without giving specific names of who would be using the strategy they call ‘lawfare’ (the use of judicial and legal means to overthrow leftist governments). “We view with deep concern the position of several politicians from reactionary sectors of the region, including some former presidents, who misuse false, misleading and inaccurate information about the judicial process that is investigating one of the sons of the current Colombian president for possible financing. of their campaign announce and legitimize scenarios of democratic rupture that only fit in their autocratic minds,” the statement read.

The signatories, which include jurists from the Latin American Council for Justice and Democracy created by the Puebla group, such as the Spaniards Baltasar Garzón and Enrique Santiago, tell Attorney General Francisco Barbosa to participate in the “soft coup”: “We ask the Attorney General of the Nation, who has made public his personal animosity with President Petro, to refrain from turning this case into a media process of political prosecution, into a new lawfare case”.

The communication comes less than a week after the country was shocked by the announcement of a prosecutor at the hearing in which he asked a judge to keep Nicolás and his ex-partner in custody, accused of enriching themselves by keeping alleged donations to the campaign Petro’s presidential election in 2022. That day Mario Burgos, the prosecutor in charge of the chaos, announced that the eldest son would collaborate with justice, accepting the charges and revealing evidence that part of those resources had been used in the campaign. For a country that has lived through successive illegal campaign financing scandals, violation of caps and even the entry of illegal money, it was a blow. Also for a president elected with the banner of change.

The denunciation comes after several months in which the Puebla Group has denounced as episodes of legal warfare a wide variety of judicial scandals against progressive politicians, such as those that have affected Dilma Roussef or Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva in Brazil, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina, the Bolivian Evo Morales or the Ecuadorian Rafael Correa.

In the case of the current Colombian government, the bench of its political movement has already turned to the inter-American justice system with similar arguments. In June, the same president denounced a “soft coup” against him and his movement, after judicial decisions against two congressmen from the Historical Pact and in the midst of an unresolved legal clash with Attorney General Margarita Cabello over the feasibility of that it can suspend democratically elected officials. On this occasion, neither the president nor any member of the government has spoken of a “soft coup” in the case of his son Nicolás. On the contrary, the Ministers of Defense and Foreign Relations expressed their solidarity this Wednesday morning with prosecutor Barbosa, who has denounced a plan by the ELN guerrilla to assassinate him —something that the leaders who are participating in a negotiating table with the Government have denied, pointing it out as an attempt to sabotage.

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