Political tension in the country increased after the recent public appearance of President Gustavo Petro Urrego in Montería, the capital of the department of Córdoba.
What was initially convened as an official event to present the farewell of his government administration, ended up becoming a scenario of harsh electoral questioning towards opposition sectors, just on the eve of the second presidential round scheduled for next June 21.
The head of state’s statement generates strong legal and institutional controversy, because it came hours after the Council of State strictly ordered him to refrain from disseminating electoral propaganda, either in favor or against any movement, group, or political party.
This restriction applies to his public speeches, as well as to broadcasts in the public press, official television and radio channels, or digital platforms.
Petro’s political speech in Córdoba
During his intervention in Córdoba, which was broadcast by the Presidency of the Republic, and to which the main departmental authorities did not accompany him, the president focused his criticism on outlining the profile of the candidate competing against the Historical Pact, although he avoided pronouncing his proper name.
In his formal statements, Petro described the opposition candidate as a “young man from Miami who does not know Colombia, but grew up and was born” in the municipality of Sahagún, and later called him a “good-for-nothing.”
The speech escalated to a more complex terrain when the head of state linked the electoral contest with the panorama of the armed conflict in the regions. Before the attendees, the president warned that it would be “sad for the people who would return to the chair of the Casa de Nariño the defender of paramilitarism who crucified two hundred thousand human lives in Colombia.”
In the same line of argument, the president brought up the judicial case of Santiago Uribe Vélez by referring to the “brother of a governor in southern Córdoba,” whom he accused of a massacre of 700 peasants in the department of Antioquia, connecting this fact with the opposing campaign.
Likewise, Petro assured that the governmental project “defeated the opposition candidate 2 to 1 in his own land,” a figure that coincides with the 55.55 percent of votes obtained by Iván Cepeda in Córdoba during the first round. The president also maintained that there are opposing sectors that use foreign resources to buy votes.
Petro violates order of the Council of State
This situation occurs at a time when the scrutiny of control bodies over public officials is at its maximum. The Attorney General’s Office is currently advancing in the investigation of 142 open files for alleged political participation by members of the Executive.
Within these processes, provisional suspensions of officials such as Carlos Carrillo and Alfredo Saade have already been made effective, while spokespersons for the opposition campaign formally requested the urgent intervention of the Attorney General to guarantee compliance with democratic guarantees.
According to the statement from the Council of State, with the presentation by magistrate Omar Joaquín Barreto Suárez, the president infringed numeral 2 of article 38 of the Law of Guarantees (Law 996 of 2005) in previous publications on YouTube and the social network X.
The high court emphasized that the use of public channels, institutional tools, or the investiture of the office to issue electoral opinions alters the purely informative and pedagogical purposes that official communication of the Colombian State must maintain by law.
*Article developed with AI support and reviewed by a journalist.
