The greatest hypocrisy?

By: Francisco Santos - 03/01/2025

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I have written little about this government this year for several reasons. Which ones? There are so many people writing about this issue with the same arguments that there is little one can contribute. President Gustavo Petro and his government have been so shameless that it is very easy to write about their shortcomings, their corruption, their terrible management. The columns almost write themselves.

Petro has already accustomed us to his misogyny, and the appointment of that character Daniel Mendoza as ambassador to Thailand, and the defense he made of him, only confirmed that his treatment of female journalists who do not agree with his government as “mafia puppets” was not a particular episode, but a fundamental element of his view of society and women.

Obviously, this fact proves two things. First, that anyone who is not with him and criticizes him is a mobster, a paramilitary or a Nazi. He expresses this clearly on his social networks and in his speeches. That mentality of with me or against me, typical of that autocratic profile that Petro has, no longer serves him, because a successful government is one that adds and not one that subtracts, but that does not matter to him, thank God.

The second thing that it proves is something that we have already seen with Armando Benedetti, with Laura Sarabia and with almost all of his government: if you are with me, it does not matter if you steal, if you are corrupt, if you are a mafioso or a paramilitary (I appoint you peacemaker) and now that you are a misogynist, as the appointment of Mendoza shows. All that is missing is the appointment of a child abuser to complete the circle. There is still time and with this president nothing can surprise us. The condition? Unrestricted support.

The hypocrisy of the man who, and those who accompany him today, championed change, the fight against corruption or peace, to speak of just some of the issues, today shamelessly shows the most shameless face of corruption sponsored from the very Palacio de Nariño, the limitless abuse of power, the franchise of the most shameless politicking that leaves exemplary members of this club, such as Juan Manuel Santos, in diapers, and, finally, the surrender of vast regions of the country to organized crime, whether called pure drug trafficking or drug trafficking disguised as a political cause.

Nothing surprises us anymore about this president and the circle that surrounds him. They don't even care about keeping up appearances, and their shamelessness is of such magnitude that it no longer causes astonishment or indignation. That's what they're betting on, on the normalization of aberrations through exhaustion, and the worst thing is that they're succeeding. The precedent is terrible for our democracy, and, the truth is, it puts this country, which was an example of maturity and political common sense, on a par with the worst banana republics, where corruption, abuse and the defenselessness of citizens in the face of the shamelessness of power are sponsored and condoned from the presidential palace.

However, this week the foreign minister, Luis Gilberto Murillo, showed another face of that hypocrisy that we thought was insurmountable with the appointment of the unpresentable Mendoza. He announced that, in the mediation for the departure of politically persecuted Venezuelans who had taken refuge in the Argentine embassy, ​​his fellow mafioso Nicolás Maduro was asking for the release of the former vice president of Ecuador Jorge Glas, accused of corruption in his country, and the release in Argentina of someone very close to Maduro's mafia.

Of course, intervention in internal affairs is condemned outright, but with one condition, if it is not carried out by them or their ideological allies, as this Colombian government, which supports Venezuela's request, frankly lets us see. The precedent of the outgoing US administration of Joe Biden and his squalid official Juan González with the release of Alex Saab and the nephews of Maduro's wife does not help, but it does make it clear that Venezuela today is a danger for anyone who opposes the regime. Kidnapping and extortion, as the mafia operates, are already part of the institutional policy of Maduro and his henchmen. One more reason to remove them, at all costs, from power.

Fortunately, the Ecuadorian government clearly said no, and I am sure that the Argentine government will do the same. What is incomprehensible, although it no longer surprises us because of its shamelessness, is that the supposed coherence of the ideology of non-intervention that the populist left that China, Russia, and Cuba preach, and that, as a good disciple, Petro and his court follow, is that now in that mediation they accept the shameless intervention in Ecuador and Argentina.

That is the other condition that Petro, as a good example of that hypocritical left, shows as one of his main values: my corruption counts, my violence counts, my abuse counts and my interference counts. This double standard is part of that pattern, it is almost the essence of his DNA, which, as it operates in the mafia, justifies what they do today.

Is this the biggest hypocrisy? The truth is, no, it is already part of their modus operandi. And we have to understand it, because in 2026 this is how they are going to operate. In the meantime, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and let's get ready, because 2025 is going to be tough and the battle ahead will be merciless.

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