The presidential debate on Monday, March 14, organized by the newspaper El Tiempo and the magazine Semana left a very tough confrontation between its three participants: Gustavo Petro, Ingrid Betancourt and Federico Gutiérrez. Several reactions to the meeting were evident on social networks, including that of Senator Gustavo Bolívar.
During the debate, the coalition candidate Team for Colombia intervened on several occasions to criticize Gustavo Petro's proposals and the roles he has played in politics in the past. Given this, Senator Gustavo Bolívar gave Federico Gutiérrez a nickname: “FicoFake”, arguing that the answers he provided during the debate lacked height.
“FicoFake has no speech. He bases his answers on attacking Petro. Zero height to debate,” Bolívar wrote on his Twitter account. In turn, he pointed out that the candidate for the Historical Pact “has no contender. He is the only one who proposes and spends half the debate disrupting fake news,” he added.
In her publication she also referred to the Green Oxygen candidate stating that she is “very lost and falls very low”. These statements have to do with a time when Betancourt brought up a mental health problem that Petro faced years ago.
The senator reminded Betancourt that she worked as an advisor in the Ministry of Finance during the administration of César Gaviria. This situation would be contradictory, given that Ingrid has been one of the main criticisms of today's head of liberalism joining Petro. “What government did you work in when you were appointed to the Belgian Embassy?” , answered Betancourt. The candidate of the Historical Pact assured him that he went to that country because they wanted to kill him in Colombia and did not miss an opportunity to question his opponent another question at the polls.
“You who came to visit me at my house in Belgium accompanied by Carlos Alonso Lucio. By what theory did they try to convince me? I'm not going to get into the internal discussion because I don't want to get into intimacies,” questioned the presidential candidate.
There, Ingrid Betancourt launched the reproachable message questioning her from different sectors of the country, for exposing the mental health of the also head of Human Colombia. “Don't rewrite history, the country knows the fight I fought against Samper. While you were at your embassy, I was fighting here, denouncing (Samper's) funding,” he said and recorded the following exchange of messages:
“They were going to kill me and I quit, do you know why? - said Petro.
- I think you have Alzheimer's. Honestly, I don't think you've seen it. And in fact, when I went to visit Gustavo, I remember that he was in a big depression, lying on the floor, unable to move. I'm not going to get involved in your private life, Gustavo, but what the country knows is that if there is anyone who confronted Ernesto Samper, it was me - answered the candidate for Oxygen Green.
Ingrid Betancourt was criticized on social media for these statements and she claimed not to regret the controversial moment. “I am not a doctor, I express a situation that was how I interpreted it at the time, but I have no knowledge of her state of health at the time,” the candidate explained to Blu Radio. In turn, he argued that it was “a colloquial way of expressing the memories of what I saw at that time.”
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