This week a controversy broke out involving presidential candidate Gustavo Petro and the mayor of Medellín Daniel Quintero over an LED fence located in the Castilla neighborhood, in Medellín. The screen projected advertising on the management of the administration of the local president, but political propaganda was also being disseminated for the campaign of the aspirant of the Historical Pact.
The LED fence sparked a wave of criticism of Quintero as he would be participating politically while he is still in public office. In fact, former prosecutor Claudia Carrasquilla commented on this on her Twitter account and tagged the National Electoral Council (CNE) to review the situation. “Until when Daniel Quintero will continue to participate in politics and use public goods to campaign for Gustavo Petro. This electronic fence is paid for with resources from the municipality of Medellín,” wrote the former official.
On March 13, the screen located in Castile was turned off after the intervention of Espacio Público officials. According to the Mayor's Office of Medellín to the newspaper El Colombiano, the LED fence is owned by a private and was not authorized to broadcast advertising.
The same media outlet learned that the owner of the fence and its manager is lawyer Ignacio Sneider Jaramillo, who would have requested publicity in his own capacity as a sympathizer of the Historical Pact. However, “in an official report of the case, Luis Eduardo Llinas, manager of the Historical Pact campaign in Antioquia, appears as an applicant for political propaganda,” said El Colombiano.
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“He (Ignacio Jaramillo) made available to the campaign a fence that we could use to broadcast some messages. All we did was give him an authorization to do the procedure, if it was required because I understand that where the fence is not public space, it was written permission,” he explained to the Antioquian media Llinas.
For his part, Alfonso Prada, head of debate at Gustavo Petro, said in previous days that the candidate's team does not know, reject and disauthorize those who financed and installed the screen. “We report that it is not part of our campaign and we do not know and disallow its promoters and funders,” Prada explained.
Daniel Quintero spoke of his closeness to the Historical Pact
On April 5, in dialogue with La FM, the mayor of Medellín, the relationship he has with petrianism. “Those are already conjectures and to answer that question is to participate in politics. What I would say in general is that, as Juan Gabriel once said, what is obvious is not asked,” he said.
It should be recalled that three of the officials of the Mayor's Office of Medellín, resigned from the Quintero administration to join Gustavo Petro's campaign. These are: Esteban Restrepo, former Secretary of Government; Juan Pablo Ramírez, former Secretary of Social Inclusion and Family; and Juan Carlos Upegui, former Secretary of Nonviolence.
Faced with these resignations and the accusations to his wife, Diana Marcela Osorio, to be close to the Historical Pact, the local president replied: “Some media have shown that Diana and Verónica (Gustavo Petro's wife) are touring Antioquia and trying to say that this is eventually political participation. And no, the first ladies or social managers are not public servants, and if Diana were given to vote for Uribe or for whoever she wants, she couldn't say no to her either.”
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