At a press conference, the union leader took advantage of his intervention to send a message to Mayor Carlos Galán, in which he demanded authorization for the platform in Plaza Bolívar.

He also considered that the permit becomes even more pressing because the President of the Republic, Gustavo Petro, announced that he will be at the march and has requested to make a speech from the podium that is traditionally placed there for that date.

“We understand this as a mechanism to constrain the free exercise that we have and much more on such a historic day in which we have always participated, we demand and demand that the administration of Mayor Galán authorize our platform in Plaza Bolívar as it is. We have requested it,” he claimed.

In addition to the complaint, Arias commented that May 1 will become an opportunity to commemorate the three years of the social outbreak, when the population demonstrated against measures of former governor Iván Duque (2018-2022), and that changed the political and social agenda in Colombia.

Today, he pointed out, we have a progressive president and we have a social agenda that really vindicates the rights of the population and that is why we will be marching this May 1.

He also expressed his concern about the acts of the extreme right that seek to lead the country to ungovernability and force the current president to leave the presidency, which he described as a soft coup.

A series of alleged failures committed by the electoral campaign are brewing in the National Electoral Council and the Prosecutor’s Office to try to hold Petro responsible and seek a political trial, he warned.

“We say in advance -he stressed- that we do not agree, it would be an institutional breakdown that does not suit the country, it would go against a democratic situation, since more than eleven million Colombians said that this should be the president.”

He reported that, for next Wednesday, there are mobilizations called in all department capitals and in other cities where the Congress of the Republic will be required not to continue turning its back on the country and that it must, on the contrary, support the reforms in reference to the initiatives presented by the Government.

“The country cannot be solely and exclusively for the privileged of Colombia. These rights that are claimed in these reforms are a way to settle a social debt that historically pro-business governments contracted against workers and the population,” he stated.

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