After the results of the first presidential round, in which Abelardo De la Espriella won, several young people and independent sectors have been receiving invitations to virtual meetings with sectors of ‘petrismo’ aligned with candidate Iván Cepeda.
One of the meetings was last Tuesday, June 2, at 7 p.m., and was named ‘Cepeda President Campaign Meeting – Progressive Popular Movement’.
Key points
One of the attendees at the virtual meeting told EL TIEMPO that issues such as territorial and digital strategies to be followed for the second round were discussed; the defense of the vote and proposals and actions for the campaign of the Historical Pact candidate.
EL TIEMPO investigated and established that one of the conveners of the meeting was the artistic pedagogy graduate Yobany Montilla Meza.
He is the former intervenor during the Petro government of Coopservir, the cooperative linked to the La Rebaja drugstore chain, which in the 90s was seized from brothers Miguel and Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela.
In addition, the House Representative for the Historical Pact, Alirio Uribe, was present at the meeting for a few minutes.
The latter, a member of the House Investigation and Accusation Commission, was the one who this week requested to shelve the investigation against President Petro for exceeding his campaign spending limits in 2022.
The strategy
EL TIEMPO had access to several recordings of the meeting and screenshots of the slides that were presented to the almost 500 people who connected from regions such as Nariño, Córdoba, Bogotá, Barranquilla, Santander, and Valle.
In one of the images, attendees were told that they should “convince” close people of alleged risks for the country if candidate Abelardo De La Espriella, from the Defensores de la Patria movement, were to win.
This newspaper has in its possession one of the slides that were projected, which reads: “Risk of Abelardo winning (for undecided voters).
This is what an Abelardo government would be like: fascist; dismantling of any labor, pension, agrarian reforms, subsidies; 40 percent reduction in spending (where will he cut from?); fracking, glyphosate; health, returning it to the hands of merchants (former presidents, paramilitaries, Congress); mega-prisons instead of universities; misogyny, mistreatment of journalists”.
José Manuel Restrepo, De la Espriella’s vice-presidential running mate, has already denied several of these points, including ending subsidies and the zero tuition program.
In any case, at the meeting, they were asked to organize, by neighborhoods and communities, ‘canelazos’ (hot cinnamon drinks) and community kitchens to attract 10 new voters per person.
Montilla’s version
EL TIEMPO contacted Yobany Montilla, who led that meeting, to ask him if what was discussed in the virtual meeting were direct strategies of Cepeda’s campaign.
“It was a meeting between activists, among grassroots militancy. What was presented are not individual proposals but a summary of what is being said and the problems of the regions,” Montilla told EL TIEMPO.
And he added: “It had nothing to do with Cepeda’s campaign, I am not a member. I reiterate it is a meeting between leaders and grassroots.”
Regarding the strategy of attracting 10 new voters per person, he said: “It is not recruitment, it is an act of persuasion to seek young people and win votes.”
The issue joins the controversy over the meeting at the Industrial University of Santander (UIS), where one of the spokespersons asked attendees to get one or two votes for Cepeda, instilling “terror” in the public about De la Espriella. In that case, the young woman said her words were taken out of context.
(Consult all articles from EL TIEMPO’s Investigative Unit here)
In any case, several points were discussed at Montilla’s meeting that are aligned with the strategies being implemented by Cepeda’s campaign. One of these is the dismantling of the constituent assembly, which his campaign has already announced.
EL TIEMPO also called Alirio Uribe, but by the close of this edition, he had not responded to the messages left for him.
INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
u.investigativa@eltiempo.com
@UinvestigativaET
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