“They can make up and cover it on the sides, but 'Fico' is Uribe's candidate”: Fajardo

In the midst of the presidential debate organized by national media El Colombiano and Red+Noticias, Colombia's candidate for the presidency of the Centro Esperanza Coalition, Sergio Fajardo, assured that Team for Colombia's candidate, Federico 'Fico' Gutiérrez, was the “make-up” candidate of former President Álvaro Uribe.

These statements come four days after the legislative elections defined the unique candidates of the political alliances that aspire to govern the country, and after the Democratic Center candidate, Oscar Iván Zuluaga, renounced his aspiration to the Casa de Nariño and announced his support for the former mayor of Medellín, 'Fico' Gutierrez.

“Federico is a very dear person and he does very well in the debates, but he is the candidate of Duque and Uribe. They can make it up, they can cover it on one side and on the other, but that model sold out in Colombia. The country will not continue on the way ahead, this is a terrible government that will not have continuity, which is responsible for the great discomforts that the country has, and Federico is their candidate. And there it will not come no matter how much support and makeup it has,” said the former governor of Antioquia, Sergio Fajardo.

For his part, Gutiérrez, who reached the second largest vote within the three consultations, only below the opposition leader, Gustavo Petro, said that he found Sergio Fajardo's response petty and arrogant, to whom he reminded him that he supported him during the mayor's office of the Antioquia capital “and I don't regret that because I feel that you did a very good mayor's office.”

However, he told him that during his administration he received support from former President Uribe “and there they didn't mind marking themselves as uribistas, but today they do play crazy people”, noting that when he took over the administration of that city he even beat the candidate of the governing party, and concluded by saying that these statements were made to affect the candidacy with which it had obtained three times the votes in the internal consultations.

“As much as I say all that, which is not true, it cannot be covered that it is Uribe 2022. Colombia has lived under the phrase: 'whoever says Uribe', and that's over. The last one Uribe said was Duque and he was fatal president. The culprit of the situation of insecurity that our country has; a country that is in the most extraordinary levels of corruption that Colombia has had in its history; unemployment; social unrest. And here is the candidate of that Government and Uribe, and he is not going to win,” said Sergio Fajardo.

Last Tuesday, March 15, former President Álvaro Uribe, natural leader of the Democratic Center, summoned the directors, regional leaders and candidates of the Centro Democrático party to an extraordinary meeting, in which he defined a five-member program committee, to decide how to consult the position of the militants in the face of the presidential elections.

The idea of the commission is that they decide, in the shortest possible time, how the inclinations of the more than 600,000 members of the governing party will be consulted, in addition, they must establish a series of fundamental programmatic points that support any decision they make on the way forward for the party.

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