The marches of this May 1st, which have historically been led by the working class, generated controversy among public opinion due to the participation of the president, Gustavo Petro, whom different sectors—which even have affinity with the government—questioned for “taking over” the workers' mobilizations.
Faced with this, in , different congressmen spoke about these events and They stated their position on the way Petro tries to minimize the protests of those who are not in favor of their reforms or initiatives.
The representative to the Chamber for the Democratic Center, Andrés Forero, questioned the tone and way in which Petro expressed himself and brought up similar events involving the president himself and by Petrist figures such as Gustavo Bolívar, current director of the Department of Social Prosperity, when in mobilizations against Iván Duque or Álvaro Uribe they went out to march with coffins.
“It does seem to me that they are using a double race because the current director of the DPS, Gustavo Bolívar, in marches against Duque and in marches against President Uribe, They showed coffins and said that Duque and Uribe had died, and then it seemed good to them and now it seems bad to them, I reject both cases. It seems to me that none of them should be accepted, but the president is wrong to generalize,” Forero said.
“I defend the right to mobilization and the right to protest (…). I cannot agree today with stigmatizing any of the mobilizations. The president should have set an example, because it was our turn for Duque to say that the marches were infiltrated by the guerrilla and how that exposed us. And how now that he comes out to say that it is a death march, when there are people who voted for him who, even so, went out to march on April 21,” added Pedraza, who questioned Petro's tone regarding the mobilizations.
“So that tone is an anti-democratic tone, which I also invite us to get out of there and recognize that there are many positions, “Much more plural, than only the paramilitaries and only the guerrilla, which is what the two political sectors that I believe should not continue ruling in Colombia want to involve us in,” Pedraza concluded.
