Spanish
Bogotá, July 3 (EFE).- The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, stated this Thursday that his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, is his "friend" and that the clash they had in a panel on global inequality during the UN Conference in Seville (Spain) was "the best debate" he has given in international forums.
"I think this is the best debate I have been able to spark in international forums. It happened outside the 'mise en scènes' (sic) for me, something very Eurocentric. Macron is my friend, he behaved well. I threw him off a bit, it's the debate of the world," Petro wrote on X.
The Colombian president accompanied his publication with a link to his YouTube account where he shared the tense debate he had on Monday with Macron in a panel during the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development held in Seville.
During the event, Colombia's first leftist president criticized global inequality and accused the countries of the North, especially Europe and the United States, of implementing anti-immigration policies and disregarding the severity of climate change.
"Votes are obtained around the anti-immigrant discourse in the north (...) A predominantly Aryan electorate in these countries, which are part of the G20 and emit a lot of CO2, allows certain political currents to deny the climate crisis (...) It is easier to win votes with lies and fetishes, saying that life will be better in those countries if those who do not have the same skin color, language or religion are expelled as quickly as possible," said Petro.
His speech sparked an angry reaction from Macron, who rejected the north-south division and demanded respect and not to simplify reality.
"Gustavo, I know the key paradigm of your politics, but I never give lessons to someone from the south. And it's a bit strange to receive lessons from someone from the south, simply because they come from the south. I demand the same kind of respect," the French president pointed out. Macron also indicated that in Europe there are politicians who "are not obsessed with migration and who fight a lot against the extreme right", so he added: "Let's not simplify the reality of our political life, please, I beg you." The French leader asserted that, with Petro's "narrative," "there is no way" to create a common global agenda, and insisted that "the only way is to work together, respecting each other, rejecting these simplifications." In his speech, Petro also criticized the inequality in the distribution of covid-19 vaccines and questioned the role of Europe in accelerating the energy transition, moving from fossil economies to clean energy. "We are on the road to suicide. In the north, they are not thinking about the children of the white voters who vote for the extreme right. In the north, they are voting to deny the climate crisis, to not take on the commitment to change, which is not to give alms to the south, it is to help themselves from the south that can absorb CO2," asserted the Colombian president.
