Colombia’s interior minister has furthered his response to ex-President Alvaro Uribe’s accusatory Twitter remarks, urging the former head of state to bring his complaints to court.
“If the [ex] president has a complaint to make, it is important that he brings it before the authorities,” said Interior Minister German Vargas Lleras, in a second response to Uribe’s Twitter accusations, which he had already denied once.
Vargas Lleras added that “[he] can ask whichever Supreme Court judge” whether there have been any charges brought against him.
On Wednesday, Uribe accused the minister of being influenced by other political officials in his election of a Supreme Court judge and questioned alleged links between the minister and paramilitary groups, after Vargas Lleras accused the former president’s administration of using its political power to secure its officials senior positions in the country’s private sector.
Uribe also reminded Vargas Lleras that he (the minister) had accused then defense minister and current President Juan Manuel Santos of “parapolitics” during the former president’s administration. In response, Vargas Lleras stated, “the ex-president knows that during the last three years of his government I never tread on the Presidential Palace.”
Upon learning that the ex-president had also said that Vargas Lleras was “posing as a moral champion” by bringing accusations against his administration, the minister replied “I am not showing myself as a moral champion … we in the bodies that are assigned to the ministry encountered facts that we made known to the authorities.”