BOGOTA – Colombia’s outgoing President Gustavo President tore into his US counterpart Donald Trump on June 4 for supporting a hard-right candidate to succeed him, saying Washington was endorsing “drug traffickers” with “genocidal” roots. The famously outspoken Petro was reacting to Trump’s full-throated endorsement of tough-talking lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella over a leftist senator in Colombia’s June 21 presidential run-off. De la Espriella, 47, made a fortune representing drug-trafficking paramilitaries, fraudsters and soccer stars. He has accused Petro of being too soft on cocaine-smuggling
left-wing guerrillas and vowed to crack down hard. “Their (US) allies in Colombia come from the narco-paramilitary regime; they are genocidal and drug traffickers,” Colombia’s first leftist president told AFP in an interview at the presidential palace. Both Petro and Cepeda accuse state-linked paramilitaries of having committed a “genocide” of leftist leaders at the height of the country’s conflict in the 1980s and 1990s. Cepeda’s father, a communist senator, was among more than 5,700 leftist political activists that were murdered during the worst years of
the conflict between the state, left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries. Trump has sought to sway the outcome of several elections in Latin America over by backing right-wingers who talk tough on crime and migration against leftists he dismisses as “communists”. AFP
Gustavo Petro, Donald Trump, Abelardo de la Espriella, Colombia presidential run-off June 21, narco-paramilitary, genocide accusation 1980s 1990s, Cepeda, cocaine-smuggling, AFP