(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Colombian President Gustavo Petro is defending his heterosexuality amid growing accusations that he was caught holding hands and cozying up with a transgender woman.
“I am heterosexual,” Petro wrote in a Spanish-language post, responding to a tweet mocking him over the allegations.
The scandal erupted in Panama, where Petro attended the inauguration of President-elect José Raúl Mulino on Sunday, according to Telemundo’s Al Rojo Vivo.
The transgender woman, television presenter Linda Yepes, herself admitted to being in Panama.
A video surfaced showing a man, dressed similarly to Petro, walking hand-in-hand with a woman many allegedly identified as Yepes.
The video shows the man holding the woman’s hand and taking photos of her in a seemingly intimate manner.
Señor Presidente de Colombia Gustavo Petro: es usted el Soldado caído en combate, que presuntamente se encontraba en el Casco Antiguo de Panamá, ( También Conocido como San Felipe) mas exactamente paseando por el Central Hotel Panamá, en actos de infidelidad agarrado de la mano… pic.twitter.com/9j5OhLHJXs
— Luis Fernando Gòmez (@luifergomezlaw) July 1, 2024
Petro, married to Colombian First Lady Verónica Alcocer since 2000, did not explicitly deny being the man in the video. Instead, he lashed out at his critics, labeling them as “transphobic.”
In a lengthy and vague tweet, he wrote, “I have always considered that intimacy is the ‘ultima ratio’ of freedom, the last trench of being free, and I will preserve this principle until I write about myself or die.”
The Colombian president added, “But these thousands of transphobic messages that have exploded in the hands of a right-wing, deeply exclusive, ignorant and discriminatory society must be rejected by the president.”
Later in his tweet, he concluded by reiterating his sexual orientation.
“I am heterosexual, but you will never hear or read a transphobic word from me. Because not only would I stop being a man, but also human,” he claimed.
Yepes, on her part, expressed shock at the backlash, particularly as she faces threats for being transgender.
“I’m not the woman in the video, but I am going through a difficult time in the topic,” she said in an interview with a local Colombian outlet.
When questioned about leaked messages between her and a Petro sibling, she responded, “We are all part of our president’s family since he was governor of Bogota.”
During a separate interview with Univision’s Despierta America on Tuesday, Yepes declined to say whether the woman in the video was her after being contacted by Petro’s government.
Petro, a radical left-wing leader and former member of the M-19 Movement—a violent paramilitary group responsible for the deaths of 13 Colombian politicians—was elected president in 2022. In April 2023, Biden hosted Petro at the White House.
