The last battle of Uribe against Santos

Seventy-four years old, three blocks from the National Capitol, everything was closed. In the heart of Bogota, at two o'clock in the afternoon of July 20, the city burst. The family plan of the day had been to come out with small flags from Colombia to encourage the armed forces that had taken to scroll through all the arsenal that they had. Even useless submarines, dragged by carts, walked along Avenida Boyacá. After the parade, many, inspired by patriotic airs, went to see how the new Congress was installed, which will have the responsibility to consolidate the controversial peace of Santos and to receive for the first time the former FARC guerrillas. The curious have lost the trip. Very few could pass. The parents, clinging to their little flags and their children, have, in desperation, insulted the police. There was nothing to do. The family program had been frustrated.

Access to the press placed him in a side corner, just in front of one of the entrances of the traditional Jesuit school, San Bartolome. At 2:30 in the afternoon, many media protested because the entrance had been closed for half an hour. Despite the efforts of Congress press chief Hébert Enrique Amor, a young authoritarian police captain, he put an end to the attempts of emboldened and useless reporters who reminded him of the sacred right to inform.

An earlier block there was no line in the access to special guests. Playing my last letter, after unsuccessfully pleading for an hour at half-past three, and dodging a crowd swirling around the former House of Representatives president Alejandro Carlos Chacón, who was taking a selfie with the controversial Senator and former governor of Santander, Richard Aguilar, at the corner of Teatro Colón, surrounded by escorts and casual admirers, presented my identity card. A policeman in a tent and in front of a laptop m found on the list of special guests. I do not know why, but it was my ticket to entry.

I had never seen the Plaza de Bolívar desert a Friday at four o'clock in the afternoon. In the center there was a huge gray spot. The pigeons had taken the place. Entering the room where the installation was about to start was not easy either. As we watched parents of congressmen wander from one place to another looking for the most splendid place to take a selfie, the rumor that the organization had failed was hovering in the mouths of reporters. 600 persons had been accredited and only 400 had access

From one moment to another someone took a by the hand, I had three doors through this labyrinth that is the Capitol, and I sat in a box full of reporters. After a drink was the elliptical room where 108 senators would take possession. Among the crowd of members of Congress, I was only looking for one, the most media of all. Just diagonally, Marcos Calarcá, Carlos Antonio Losada, Gustavo Quintero, Pablo Catatumbo and Victoria Sandino arrived on the site in a disciplined manner because, one o'clock in the afternoon, it was the fiercest enemy in the world. they had. these in fifty-five years of war: Álvaro Uribe Vélez

Efraín Cepeda, president of the Senate, he began calling to the list when just mentioned the name of the former president, the guests and a good number of senators burst into an untimely applause. Cepeda scolded the audience. Such expressions are forbidden in a Congress session. Even Uribe himself was upset. If you did not know the most popular president in the history of Colombia, you might think that he is a peaceful, almost calm man. A kind of wise grandfather who shelters his children with measured advice and reprimands. He was standing, white and clean as a bread, like a village priest. He praised the considerable number of members of Congress who went to his post at the four o'clock break. Then Cepeda announced the entrance of President Juan Manuel Santos, his enemy for eight years, after his last trip from the Nariño Palace to Congress.

Uribe looked so calm and relaxed that he was not looking at his political enemies who were diagonal to him, right next to Farc commanders. Gustavo Bolívar, Ángela María Robledo, Gustavo Petro, Iván Cepeda and Maria José Pizarro represented in three rows, in a beautiful symbolic act, the white hat of Carlos, his father, the commander of the M-19. 19659002] The face of the former president changed when Santos, accompanied by his wife Maria Clemencia and his son Esteban, entered by a congressional wing, at a slow pace, greeting all who approached. Uribe immediately sat down and started talking to the person next to him, Ruby Chagui, his former press officer, who managed to get 31,000 votes in the last senatorial elections. When Santos went up to make his speech, a salvo of applause echoed in the place. The only ones who did not shake their palms were those at the Democratic Center. Uribe has never watched the current president.

Since he began his speech with the defense of his eight year mandate and peace agreement with the FARC, Uribe began with his new weapon: Twitter. More than 4.6 million people receive their messages when they are broadcast. During the time when Santos spoke, the former president wrote 64 trills, each of them focusing on the contradiction and denying the results of the management that Santos wanted to defend in his speech. 39; farewell.

The first trill was a bell on the edge that would come: "Congress with people convicted of atrocious crimes, without compensation to the victims, without carrying out symbolic, inadequate sanctions." In Colombia, increased crime and criminal reorganization of FARC: apparent peace ". There was no point at which I did not refute it. When the president spoke of delivering the country better than he had ever been, Uribe responded with this trill: "The reality of the country shows the opposite of the best time that Govt (sic) says". In Uribe, the only thing that moved him was a muscle in his cheek.

I was wondering how he was going so that his fingers would not weaken. He suddenly interrupted his writing to ask Senator Chagui something. She pulled a magazine from her purse. For the former president, the barrage of trills downloaded the cell phone. Overcoming the disturbance continued. One after the other and after the other. The only time he responded to the applause requested by Santos, is when he was referring to the work of the military forces whose staff was on the side of the enclosure, just below the fresco of Santiago Martínez Delgado. There was also a positive reaction when they recognized the victims of the armed conflict with their group who stood up but did not applaud.