“Institutionality has won and the social rule of law is being protected,” said the attorney before the Court’s ruling.
The controversy generated by the decision of President Gustavo Petro not to abide by the disciplinary ruling issued by the Attorney General’s Office that suspended the mayor of Riohacha, La Guajira, José Bermúdez Cotes, was settled by the Constitutional Court, through the Ruling C-030, through which it ratified the powers of the Public Ministry to investigate, prosecute and sanction servers of popular election.
For her part, the attorney Margarita Cabello Blanco, in the forum «Advances in the Electoral Process» in the city of Santa Marta, ruled on said ruling and was emphatic in stating that, in view of that ruling, «institutionality has won and the social rule of law is being protected«.
«Judgment C-030 and that of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have never expressed or forced the Colombian State so that it cannot provisionally suspend, which is different from a sanction, when the corresponding elements are given for it.«.
The foregoing, in clear reference to the fact that the President Petro refused to sign the order of the control entity, noting that the Prosecutor’s Office cannot determine these suspensionsaccording to him, because that was made clear in the decision of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (I/A Court HR) of 2020 (which was in his favor), which established that the administrative authorities they cannot remove officials elected by popular vote.
In this regard, the head of the control entity highlighted that judgment C-030 ratifies the constitutional norm in which powers are granted to the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation to dispose of sanctions final, investigate, prosecute and punish, as long as they have the intervention of a judicial officialwhich in this specific case is the contentious-administrative judge.
Mrs. Cabello Blanco concluded that the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation «it will continue to sanction public officials, including those elected by popular vote, when appropriate, always with all the procedural guarantees«.
In the ruling, the Constitutional Court was emphatic in emphasizing that the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court cannot be above colombian constitution.
The head of state lost that pulse, but, even though the Court’s sentence was known, he affirmed on his Twitter, in which the high court had agreed with him.