Colombian opposition Senator Piedad Cordoba Sunday criticized the Tweets of Twitter newcomer President Alvaro Uribe via her account on the social networking service.
Cordoba, who with over 38,000 followers is a veteran of the site, responded to Uribe’s comment that “Security is an art that is not achieved by speaking, but is an art achieved by working,” which he posted on his new Twitter account on Sunday.
Cordoba responded by mocking Uribe’s notion of security, bringing up the false positives issue, a scandal in which thousands of innocent Colombians were murdered by the army and reported as guerrillas in order to inflate their statistics of rebels killed in battle.
“Security for who? … What about the security for the thousands of youths, false positives, that the government assassinated in cold blood,” Cordoba Tweeted.
Cordoba’s criticisms of Uribe did not end with the issue of false positives. Later in the day, Uribe posted that, “We cannot relax in regards to protecting unionists,” to which Cordoba responded that, “The DAS, at your service and command, gave lists of union members to paramilitaries for them to threaten and assassinate … Security for whom?”
Uribe has been heavily criticized in the past for not doing enough to protect trade unionists. In 2009, Colombia was the most dangerous country in the world for unionists, with 40 assassinations.
Since 1986, 2,721 trade unionists have been murdered, 573 of these since August 2002 when Colombian President Alvaro Uribe took power.
Seeking to spread his message and reach the Colombian public more effectively, Uribe joined Twitter earlier this month, and has already grown his follower-base to rival that of liberal Senator Piedad Cordoba. Uribe currently has almost 37,000 followers.