Petro calls for a national demonstration for sovereignty on Wednesday

The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, called for a national demonstration for sovereignty next Wednesday, amid tensions with his US counterpart, Donald Trump, following the arrest of Nicolás Maduro in Caracas. “We’ll meet on Wednesday in all the squares of Colombia, at 4 pm. Now let’s defend national sovereignty,” the president stated on his X account. The president added that he will participate in the gathering that will take place in the Plaza de Bolívar in the Colombian capital where, he said, he will speak “to the people of Bogotá”.

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Petro, who is a severe critic of Trump’s war on drugs in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific, has condemned the military attacks on Saturday in Caracas and other points in Venezuela in which Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were arrested, who today were presented before a judge in New York. On Sunday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that, like Venezuela, “Colombia is also very sick”, and referring to Petro, he said that the country is “governed by a sick man who likes to manufacture cocaine and sell it to the United States and that’s something he won’t be doing for much longer”. When asked if that means there could be a US operation in Colombia, Trump replied: “that sounds good to me”. Faced with those comments, Petro threatened this Monday to take up arms again if necessary, as in his years in the M-19 guerrilla, to defend the sovereignty of his country from the “illegitimate threat” of the US president.