The meeting that everyone was waiting for has been waiting. Three weeks ago, while he was detained in the prosecutor’s bunker, Nicolás Petro let the officials know that he did not want to receive his father, nothing more and nothing less than the President of the Republic. The presidential entourage had to turn around. This Monday, in Barranquilla, a city from which he cannot leave by court order, Nicolás changed his mind and finally received his father, Gustavo Petro. The country speculated that they must have dealt with the case open to the son for illicit enrichment and money laundering that has brought so many headaches to his father. Nicolás said no, that they actually talked about the son that he will soon have, whom he is going to call Luka Samuel.
Today I visited my son Nicolás. As a father he will always have my support and love. As president, I have unhesitatingly respected judicial independence. I expect a criminal action free of political agendas and fully subject to due process and court rulings.
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) August 21, 2023
Nicolás Petro received money from businessmen and dubious characters during the campaign. Instead of paying it into the party’s accounts, he kept it and invested it in a house and living a rich life, according to the Colombian prosecutor’s office. The secret could have been buried in the sea of corruptions that never see the light, but it coincided with the fact that he broke up with her wife and began a relationship with one of her best friends. Day Vásquez, which is the name of her first wife, made the entire network public, which put him in the eyes of justice, but also her, who also participated in the corruption. Vásquez didn’t seem to care, he just wanted to watch the world burn. The two listened to the charges against them sitting at the same table, shoulder to shoulder. He looked worried, she smiled.
That same day Petro tried to hold a meeting with his son, who hours before had said that he agreed to collaborate with the prosecution, to which he promised to show that his father’s campaign received illegal money ―Vásquez had previously agreed to cooperate with the law. ―. Nicolás asked for a piece of paper and wrote: “I have no interest in receiving Mr. Gustavo Petro Urrego.” It must be the first time someone has refused to see him since he was president. His escort, who always goes hours before to the places he is going to visit to prepare security, made a trip in vain. Just two days later, Nicolás turned against his father, who did not raise him because he was in hiding as a guerrilla and later found a partner other than the boy’s mother. He said that Petro had turned his back on him, abandoned him and that he felt used. In a matter of hours, the president tweeted: “What happened to my son is terrible and very unfortunate for me. Hopefully one day I can talk to him and forgive us.” Colombia was witnessing an oedipal drama live.
Visit from my father:
I want to inform you that today I received a visit from my father, we met for a few minutes as a family, there was Laura, my mother and some maternal cousins.
We talk about Luka Samuel and the importance of him in our lives.
Not everything revolves around politics.
– Nicolas Petro Burgos (@nicolaspetroB) August 21, 2023
The relationship seemed broken; the arrangement, difficult. With his actions, Nicolás had caused the biggest crisis the president has had so far. He caught him at a time of low popularity and with several of his most ambitious projects stranded. From the beginning he simultaneously played the role of a grieving father and a president committed to the separation of powers. He said that at no time was he going to obstruct the prosecution’s investigation and so far he has not done so. That father and son were going to see each other these days was not in anyone’s expectations. But this morning it was learned, through a tweet from a neighbor, that the president was in the Villa Campestre neighborhood, in Barranquilla, where Nicolás lives. Later, when it was already public that the faces had been seen, Petro wrote on Twitter (now X): “Today I visited my son Nicolás. As a father he will always have my support and love. As president, I have unhesitatingly respected judicial independence. I expect a criminal action free of political agendas and fully subject to due process and court rulings.”
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I WILL continue to collaborate with justice.
— Day Vásquez C (@Daysvasquezc) August 21, 2023
He did not move an inch from his Solomonic stance. Nicolás, later, was a little more specific: “My father’s visit: I want to inform you that today I received a visit from my father, we met as a family for a few minutes, there was Laura, my mother and some maternal cousins. We talk about Luka Samuel and the importance of him in our lives. Not everything revolves around politics. The matter seemed closed, but Day Vásquez appeared out of nowhere, the ex-wife who revealed everything. Between tweet and tweet with cloying song lyrics, she wrote in X: “I WILL continue to collaborate with justice.” She implied that Nicolás may have changed his mind after seeing his father and stopped cooperating with the prosecution. There is no indication or proof that this is true. In other words, the news was that, finally, a father and son who maintain a conflictive relationship—and which ones don’t?—had chatted “for a few minutes” in a carefree manner. For a while, if that is true, they left behind the issue that has made the Government of Colombia tremble.
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