After the results of the first presidential round, in which Abelardo De la Espriella won, several young people and independent sectors have been receiving invitations to virtual meetings with sectors of Petrismo close to candidate Iván Cepeda.
One of the meetings was last Tuesday, June 2, at 7 p.m., and was named ‘Cepeda President Campaign Meeting – Progressive Popular Movement’.
Key points
One of the attendees at the virtual meeting told EL TIEMPO that matters such as territorial and digital strategies to be followed for the second round were discussed; the defense of the vote and proposals and actions for the campaign of the Historical Pact candidate.
EL TIEMPO investigated and established that one of the conveners of the meeting was the licensed artistic pedagogy teacher Yobany Montilla Meza.
He is the former intervener during the Petro government of Coopservir, the cooperative linked to the La Rebaja drugstore chain, which in the 90s was seized from brothers Miguel and Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela.
In addition, the representative to the House of Representatives for the Historical Pact, Alirio Uribe, was present for a few minutes at the meeting.
The latter, a member of the House Investigation and Accusation Commission, was the one who this week requested to archive the investigation against President Petro for violating campaign spending limits in 2022.
The strategy
EL TIEMPO had access to several recordings of the meeting and screenshots of the slides that were presented to the almost 500 people who connected from regions such as Nariño, Córdoba, Bogotá, Barranquilla, Santander, and Valle.
In one of the images, attendees were told that they should “convince” close people of alleged risks for the country if candidate Abelardo De La Espriella, from the Defensores de la Patria movement, were to win.
This newspaper has in its possession one of the slides that were projected, which reads: “Risk of Abelardo winning (for undecided voters).
This is what a government by Abelardo would be like: fascist; dismantling of any labor, pension, agrarian reform, subsidies; 40 percent reduction in spending (where will he cut from?); fracking, glyphosate; health, returning it to the hands of merchants (former presidents, paramilitaries, Congress); mega-prisons instead of universities; misogyny, mistreatment of journalists”.
José Manuel Restrepo, De la Espriella’s vice-presidential running mate, has already denied several of these points, including ending subsidies and the zero tuition program.
In any case, at the meeting, they were asked to organize, by neighborhoods and communities, “canelazos” (hot cinnamon drinks) and community pots to attract 10 new voters per person.
Montilla’s version
EL TIEMPO contacted Yobany Montilla, who led that meeting, to ask him if what was discussed in the virtual meeting were direct strategies of Cepeda’s campaign.
“It was a meeting between activists, among grassroots militants. What was presented are not individual proposals but a summary of what is said and the problems of the regions,” Montilla told EL TIEMPO.
And he added: “It had nothing to do with Cepeda’s campaign, I am not a member. I reiterate it is a meeting between leaders and bases.”
Regarding the strategy of attracting 10 new voters per person, he said: “It is not recruitment, it is a persuasion action to find young people and win votes.”
The issue joins the controversy over the meeting at the Industrial University of Santander (UIS), where one of the spokespersons asked attendees to get one or two votes for Cepeda, instilling “terror” in the citizenry about De la Espriella. In that case, the young woman said her words were taken out of context.
(Consult all articles from EL TIEMPO’s Investigative Unit here)
In any case, several points were touched upon at Montilla’s meeting that align with the strategies that Cepeda’s campaign is implementing. One of these is the dismantling of the constituent assembly, which his campaign has already announced.
EL TIEMPO also called Alirio Uribe, but as of the close of this edition, he had not responded to the messages left for him.
INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
u.investigativa@eltiempo.com
@UinvestigativaET
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