THE SENATE considers that the new process for the election of Comptroller General should not be done from the beginning with a public call, considering that it was since Congress introduced substantial changes in the criteria and values that defined a list of 10 applicants, led for the Council of State to declare void the election of Carlos Hernán Rodríguez.
This was requested by the General Secretariat of the Senate, headed by Gregorio Eljach, to the Council of State.
Contrary to the decision of the Council of State that orders “to redo the entire process from the call, including, to elect the Comptroller”, for the remainder of the constitutional period, the Legislature considers that it must be carried out from resolution 03 of 3 August 2022, when the board of directors of Congress introduced substantial changes to the selection criteria and values, which vitiated the election of Rodríguez Becerra as comptroller and, from there, the declaration of nullity of his election in said position.
This is stated in an appeal filed by Secretary Eljach to the reporting magistrate of the Fifth section, Carlos Enrique Moreno, indicating that “the new selection that will be made must be advanced from the exclusion of the process” of the aforementioned Resolution, which ” It is where it is affirmed by the Chamber, the alleged irregularity of the act of election and not of its convocation started, since the actions prior to that Administrative Act, enjoy full legality ”.
Eljach adds that, during the rest of the process, he did not have any vices, as the Council of State admits, the applicants acquired some rights and to whom “Congress must guarantee that, when the process is redone, they continue in the conditions in which they were included in the list of eligible, before the issuance of the referred Resolution”.
As is known, the Fifth Section of the Council of State declared the nullity of the election of Rodríguez Becerra as comptroller general of the Republic for the period 2022-2026 (last Thursday), by proving the irregularity of unjustified changes in the criteria and values that “the evaluation parameters of the participants varied seriously, after the results of the knowledge tests and the evaluation of the resumes were already known, an activity carried out by the Industrial University of Santander, in the first phase of the election.
The Secretary of the Senate also justifies the request to start the process from the phase it was in when the Resolution of August 3 was issued, noting that the Council of State found no irregularity in the stages prior to it, that is, in the study of resumes and tests carried out by the aforementioned University.
Rodríguez asks for clarification
Comptroller General Carlos Hernán Rodríguez announced yesterday that he will ask the Council of State for clarification of the ruling that removes him from office.
He indicated that: “I abide by and respect the judicial decision, without prejudice to the legitimate right that assists me as a citizen to file the resources and demands that our legal order contemplates, to restore my rights and preserve the normal functioning of the constitutional body.”
In this sense, Rodríguez Becerra explains that: “my lawyer will preliminarily request a clarification that will very surely allow that ruling to be adapted to the constitutional and legal order. I must indicate to the public that the judicial sentence affects my rights as a citizen and as a person in the election process”.
The outgoing official stated that with the clarification he does not seek to modify the meaning of the ruling “because he cannot do it, this is a decision of an instance on which no type of appeal is appropriate. What he wants with the explanation is that they tell me from what moment the election process is invalidated, because when I review the exercise of the same I found that the procedure of the Industrial University of Santander is never questioned, in the selection process ” .
Rodríguez also expressed that in the event that the ruling of the Council of State implies making a new process from scratch, it would not be presented again.