Last weekend, the head of state once again referred to the peace managers program, which is intended for 100,000 young people from popular sectors, whom the State will support with resources so that they can “eat and study”. Petro explained that the initiative will be financed with the budget addition that the Government will present to Congress.
The president indicated in an act with young people that he led in the city of Cali, that the project is “undoubtedly a challenge. A hundred thousand is not all the youth. But we do go to the part where the scar is, perhaps, to those hundred thousand young people who are seduced by violence, even because they see no alternative”.
President Petro added that this initiative is part of “the budget addition bill. We are going to present it, because it is the money that comes from the taxes that grew from the tax reform that was approved last year”.
In this regard, he pointed out that “in this budget that we are going to present these days, you will see what we want as a Government, which is not a bullet for young people and it is not turning a deaf ear to the just claim. It is trying to jointly build the bridges that unite us as a society”.
The resources, he said, “are destined, precisely, and you will see it in this project, to the mother, a young woman, who has the child and does not have anything to bring her milk with today; but also, he added, “giving food to that young man who dared to go out into the streets to shout dignity, to the peasants without land, to see if it is possible for them to have land, to education, to see if it is possible for us to blow up the wall of the university so that it becomes open doors for the youth”.
In this sense, the president emphasized that, in order to open this path for these one hundred thousand young people, we must ask the State “to allow those young people who are in prison today to help us organize, As spokesmen for peace, these hundred thousand young people become a great force for peace and can demonstrate that it is possible for the youth of Colombia to live in Colombia”.
He also urged young people to contribute to peace. “The struggle is in those millions of people who decide to transform a country or maintain a country, and not over there, on those trails that I know, isolated, where nothing but death or killing is expected. Killing or dying does not serve to transform Colombia. We’ve seen that for decades.”