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COLOMBIAN opposition leader Gustavo Petro is considering legal action against President Ivan Duque, claiming that he won the 2018 election through the support of “the mafia.”
The runner-up in the 2018 poll has always insisted that the vote was rigged, accusing Mr Duque of colluding with drug barons.
But Mr Duque’s Democratic Centre Party dismissed the claims, which included allegations that the party co-ordinated vote-buying in northern Colombia with the drug-trafficking organisation Marquitos Figueroa, as a leftist plot.
Mr Petro insisted that his party, Colombia Humana, “does not recognise the legitimacy of the current president of Colombia, nor that of his vice-president [Marta Lucia Ramirez] who has also been muddied by obvious links to drug trafficking.”
Ms Ramirez and her husband, Alvaro Rincon, were reportedly in business with a senior drug trafficker, “Memo Fantasma,” a former Medellin Cartel narco.
Mr Rincon admitted working with the cartel during development of a Bogota real estate project.
But Ms Ramirez denied using her influence to get his children accepted into one of Bogota’s most exclusive schools, the Nuevo Granada School.
It has since allegedly received donations from Memo Fantasma and his wife, Medellin socialite Catalina Mejia, according to the Colombia Reports news website.
Colombian senator Mr Petro insisted that he was the true winner of the 2018 election. He initially accepted the result after Mr Duque finished in first place around two million votes ahead of Mr Petro.
But on Sunday he said: “Duque is not the legitimate president of Colombia.”
Mr Petro said that he would “take action before judicial bodies,” although he did not specify details of any legal challenges.
Mr Duque is backed by the US which has imposed tough sanctions on officials from neighbouring Venezuela, which it declared a “narco-terror state” earlier this year.