From the San Francisco Las Lomas neighborhood (Cartagena), President Gustavo Petro was interviewed by José Manuel Acevedo, director of Noticias RCN. The Minister of Health, Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo, was also present in the interview – the president’s first with a television medium this year.
If you didn’t see it, or are watching many videos of that interview on social networks without context, here we bring you the summary of what he said:
“I had to intervene in the EPS several months ago.” Petro referred to the recent interventions of superSalud to Sanitas, the New EPS and the SOS. He pointed out that intervening in them was not “revenge” for having sunk his health reform in Congress.
“I should have intervened several months ago. The indicators already warranted it, the rules had already been violated. “I waited for Congress and I waited for smooth transit,” he said.
He also assured that the interventions “are not bad,” but, on the contrary, he seeks to improve them. “The majority of EPSs that survive today want reform,” he said. “Those who are worse off needed something to save them, they believed that they could make fun of the government and society, that with having friends who were congressmen, everything was fine,” he concluded.
“The people convene the constituent power.” One of the president’s most controversial proposals has been that of a constituent assembly to carry out his reforms. Faced with this issue, the president assured that it is not the government that calls, but the people.
He insisted on his thesis that to call a constituent does not have to go through Congress. “The constituent power has already started. We have a population that increasingly decides and that must end in an instrument of constitutional application, like the Constitution of ’91,” he said.
“There are groups that have betrayed peace and others that claim to want to.” The president recognized that the negotiating tables with the ELN and the EMC dissidents are going through a crisis.
“The EMC is a bit of fragmented armed groups. The Cauca group killed an indigenous woman the day after I was in minga in Cali and that was the last straw,” she said.
On the other hand, he assured that he wanted to move forward at the table with the ELN and propose a specific strategy with the Gulf Clan.
Here is the full interview.
