Colombia: Gustavo Petro Reiterates Call to Join His Campaign to Secure Presidency

Gustavo Petro, the leftist candidate who was recently endorsed by Indigenous, Campesino groups on Wednesday insisted that in order to win the second round of presidential elections he'll need the support from the political center in the country represented by Coalición Colombia movement led by Sergio Fajardo, and others to ensure he wins against the right-wing candidate Ivan Duque. 

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Petro made the call during a press conference in Bogota for a united front to defeat Duque.

The event was attended by the former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who was kidnapped and held hostage by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) for six years, who also endorsed Petro on Tuesday. Betancourt, who spent more than six years under FARC's custody, stressed the importance of the coalition.

The press conference was also attended by Petro's vice presidential candidate, Angela María Robledo, and Senator Antonio Navarro Wolff, among other representatives of parties and movements supporting the center-left candidate who also served as Bogota's mayor formerly. 

"Here there are missing political leaders of Colombia, liberals, all liberalism, including their presidential candidate Humberto de la Calle, the Galán brothers (Juan Manuel and Carlos Fernando, sons of the murdered Luis Carlos Galán)," said the 58-year-old former mayor of Bogota.  

"If they do not arrive, we'll see, and we'll win the Presidency and they will be invited again to be part of a pluralist and deeply democratic government in Colombia," Petro insisted.

He also insisted that his campaign is "open to more" and reiterated that it has garnered the support of people from different fields, including the Nobel Prize-winning author, JM Coetzee (2003), French economist Thomas Piketty, jurists, some Indigenous groups, artists, along with "3,004 academics from both Colombia and from outside."  

"For us, this coalition is important so that Colombia understands that this is not simply a personal support to Gustavo Petro but it is the decision to build together that vision of the Colombia we want," he proclaimed. 

Petro also clarified his stance on the FARC, the former guerrilla group turned political entity, saying, he had not received support from the party and if he becomes the president, he would "not" govern with that group. 

Petro further explained that his community supports the peace agreement signed in 2016 between the government and the ex-guerrilla group and stressed that it must be respected. 

The presidential candidate also called for the need of a free and fair electoral system, insisting that the country's electoral system is flawed and that the mechanism deployed in the first round of May 27 could not be reviewed which he considered as "a grey element in the campaign."   

He criticized that the jurors are not changed for the second round of the elections and assured that with that "the darkness remains on the electoral process."