Allegations of Russian aid in the election and ceasefire denied: 2023 starts disastrous for Colombian President Petro

The year hasn’t even completed its first week, and the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, is already suffering the embarrassment of two political crises unleashed since Sunday (1st).

This Wednesday (4), Colombian Interior Minister Alfonso Prada announced that the government had suspended the decree for a bilateral ceasefire with the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group, a day after the guerrilla group denied it and stated that there is no agreement in this regard.

Shortly before midnight on the last day of 2022, Petro had stated that the ELN and four other armed groups had reached a six-month bilateral ceasefire with the government, which would run from January 1 to June 30.

In a statement released on Tuesday (3), the ELN, with whom the Colombian government resumed peace talks last year, denied the information and said in a statement that “it only fulfills what is discussed and agreed at the Dialogue Table of which we participate” and that “a unilateral government decree cannot be accepted as an agreement”.

Prada claimed this Wednesday that “in the next cycle [of negotiations] the dialogue on this issue [ceasefire] will be reactivated,” but the denial of the announcement made by Petro had already done the damage: the president is being accused of amateurism, in the milder analyses, and to propagate fake news, in the opinion of the parties that oppose it.

“It’s a sign of improvisation and lack of coordination on the part of the [government] team of negotiators,” said León Valencia Agudelo, director of the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation, in an interview with El Espectador newspaper. The second round of negotiations since the resumption of talks will begin in Mexico on the 20th.

The second crisis was also triggered on Tuesday, when American journalist Matt Taibbi, in a new chapter of Twitter Files, disclosed that internal documents from the social network prove that Russia had helped Petro in his victorious presidential campaign last year.

According to a report obtained by the journalist, during a routine monitoring of activities on the social network in Latin America, focusing on Venezuela, Cuba and Colombia, movement on Twitter typical of bots (robots) was detected, in which fake accounts were identified and promotion of the hashtags #PactoHistorico (name of the Colombian president’s coalition), #PetroPresidente2022 and #PetroPresidenteColombia2022.

This activity would be linked to the Internet Research Agency, popularly known as the Saint Petersburg Troll Factory and whose main financier would be Yevgeny Prigozhin, oligarch supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin and leader of the Wagner Group paramilitary group. Petro has not yet commented on the matter.

On Twitter, Federico “Fico” Gutiérrez, one of the candidates defeated by Petro in last year’s election, criticized the president for the two scandals.

“The Petro government announces things that are not true. The ELN says no ceasefire has been agreed. The worst part of all this is that the government has already handcuffed the security forces and the civilian population is defenseless. It’s not just improvised, it’s handing over the country to criminal groups,” he said, regarding the ceasefire denied by the guerrillas.

Regarding the Twitter Files complaint, Gutiérrez stated that Petro and his supporters “won with trickery, lies, support from criminal structures and even interference from Russia”.

“No wonder Petro did not question the invasion and deaths in Ukraine during the campaign. Are they preparing to do the same in the 2023 regional elections? 

With information from the EFE/Gazeta do Povo