President Juan Manuel Santos took a diplomatic stance in the latest back-and-forth with former President Alvaro Uribe.
In an interview with CM&, Santos attempted to mediate relations with Uribe, explaining that “the fight against corruption is not a fight against [Uribe] or his government… the struggle is against the corrupt, pertaining to any party or any government.”
Santos added that Uribe “is an honest person and [Santos] would have to find something that he does not know to change his opinion.”
The current leader was responding to attacks the former president made from his Twitter account. Uribe recently tweeted, “as an elector of the current government it offends me that [Santos’] anti-corruption policy is a show against our government.”
Uribe also recently compared corruption proceedings against members of his government to “false positives,” which suggested that the investigations were conducted in bad faith.
Santos retorted that he “hopes that we can talk in the near future because to fight does not make sense… I prefer to call him personally and it never crossed my imagination to cut any communication.” He added that “if the fight with Uribe is one-sided it is because from here to there, there is not going to be a fight, each time there is an attack I start to mediate.”
The president reassured that the fight against corruption will not falter.
“The people can be absolutely sure that [in the fight against corruption] we are not going to lower our guard, if we have to touch on the previous government, the governments before or this one… we are going to fight this scourge with the same forcefulness as terrorists because they do the same damage.”