Iván Cepeda, candidate for the Colombian presidential elections for the coalition of President Gustavo Petro, warned this Wednesday that Colombia is not a “colony” or a “protectorate” of the United States and asked Donald Trump’s country to respect Petro as a representative of the Colombian “people” and “nation.”
“Colombia is not a colony, it is not a protectorate, it is not even an unconditional government of the United States Government. It is a sovereign country,” he said at a press conference held in Madrid before meeting with Colombians living in Spain.
At the headquarters of the Spanish union General Workers’ Union (UGT), Cepeda, who aspires to succeed Gustavo Petro at the head of Colombia as he is the candidate of the Historical Pact, said, regarding the “military intervention” of the United States against Venezuela, that Trump is not a “wayward” man who acts in an “irrational” manner.
“We do not consider President Trump as a wayward man, who acts in an irrational and emotional way, but as the expression of a political reality and that is that the extreme right today has taken the form of a neo-fascist reality,” argued the senator and philosopher.
Although he agreed that “there is plenty of room to discuss the nature of Venezuela’s regime,” the presidential candidate defended that the operation that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, “should not be seen” in a “simplistic” manner, as the “overthrow of a dictator,” as “both the United States Government and some analysts have wanted to present.”
Also read: Could Trump intervene in Colombia? President Petro responds: ‘Let them come for me’
On the contrary, it is about “the rigorous application of a policy that is ongoing”: the new national security strategy of the United States and particularly the “path” that the North American country is taking to “consider the Western Hemisphere” as a territory “subject” to its “interests and purposes.”
This leads to the “repeal” of “the entire international order”, “of the sovereignty of states”, “of public international law” and “of international legality”, warned the Historical Pact candidate.
Progressive unity in the face of World War III
Cepeda also showed that not only Venezuela is in Trump’s sights.
“It is Honduras, it is Greenland… It is a new geopolitical and geostrategic reality. We are facing the emergence of a new stage, if not to say a different era,” said Cepeda before pointing out that “some compare what happened in Venezuela” last weekend with “what happened in Chile in 1957”, but the difference with the current moment is that now “there are progressive governments” in Latin America.
“Today there are powerful social movements, political, social and cultural forces, to confront a threat of this magnitude. Not only in Colombia, but throughout the world,” he added, calling to “form and articulate these forces” to “avoid” the “danger to humanity” posed by the policy being carried out by Donald Trump.
For Cepeda, the path that the Republican is taking “leads to World War III.”
“That path leads to ending natural resources without mercy. That path leads, simply and plainly, to ending Latin America and the possibility of it continuing to be a zone of peace and turning it into a hell of war,” he predicted.
Thus, he called on “all democratic forces” not to demobilize, and also appealed to American progressivism to defend democracy “in their own country,” where Trump “has trampled” the Constitution.
With information from EFE
