The former president and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Juan Manuel Santos, spoke on 6AM Hoy Por Hoy about the importance of new presidents not to reject the achievements or projects of their predecessors. He gave his opinion on the government of Gustavo Petro.
Regarding how Gustavo Petro received the country, Juan Manuel Santos said: “The truth is that President Petro inherited many problems from Duque. Starting with a very high external deficit, such as inflation, unemployment, a very large external debt, and other very high debts. But I think we all wish for Petro to correct this trend, but it’s been a year and three months and it’s not like that, but we have to admit that he received a lot of problems.
Likewise, Juan Manuel Santos assured that he hopes that Gustavo Petro will reach a national agreement because this is what the country needs.
“We must stop this polarization, so that the different sectors of society stop insulting each other and find common denominators, because that is the definition of democracy. If we continue like this it will be very difficult to solve the problems of the citizens. Hopefully this spirit of the Government will be translated into real agreements,” said Santos.
Another one of the issues that has become the most obvious in the current Government is the area of security, with criminal organizations that do not respect the ceasefires that have been proposed, breaking the negotiation tables and thus increasing the kidnapping, crimes and more.
For his part, Santos spoke about the process he carried out with the FARC and explained: “When they asked us for a ceasefire, we said no, an example of this is when Rabin sat down to negotiate to Arafat and they agreed to negotiate peace. .as if there was no terrorism and the other party said to allow terrorism too as if there was no negotiation. “We told the FARC the same thing.”
“We agree that if everyone agrees there will be a ceasefire and that works, because one can give these groups carte blanche and think that one can negotiate with a carrot and not a stick , it must be there if one wants to have agreements that can work,” he said.
During the presentation, Juan Manuel Santos said that President Gustavo Petro inherited many problems and that instead of improving what he proposed to fix, he made things worse. However, former president Álvaro Uribe also launched a tweet in which he interpreted Santos’ departure from the country as worse.
https://twitter.com/AlvaroUribeVel/status/1726272239719387535?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Regarding this, Santos correctly said: “Personally, I will not answer him, because this is where he enters the quicksand, because if he wants us to make a comparison of what he did with what we did, well, in I think it will happen. too bad for him and “That’s a debate that academia and journalists should have at some point, but there is evidence.”
