On January 26, the Plenary Chamber of the Constitutional Court resumed the discussion on the reform of the criminal code of the Attorney General’s Office that gave jurisdictional powers to the entity so that it could carry out investigations against officials who were elected by popular vote.
This discussion would put the existence of the institution at risk, since if approved it would take away an important part of the functions of the Public Ministry. For its part, the body has manifested itself ensuring that this guarantees rights to citizens.
This debate was placed on the public agenda with the ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights -IACHR- in the case of President Gustavo Petro, in which the nation was condemned for the dismissal of the current president of the country in 2014 and that lasted 15 days, when he was the mayor of Bogotá.
“The State failed to comply with its obligations (before the American convention), due to the existence and application of the norms of the Single Disciplinary Code that empower the Attorney General’s Office to impose said sanctions on democratically elected public officials, as was the case of Mr. Petro,” pointed out the Court in 2020.
In this sense, in 2022, when Iván Duque was still president, attorney Margarita Cabello carried out a reform arguing that it would comply with the recommendations given by the IACHR. However, the same body ruled against it, assuring that the recommendations given had not been taken into account.
“The document establishes that it does not comply with the mandates of the sentence that was adopted in the case of the former mayor of Bogotá, Gustavo Petro, and questions that the Attorney General’s Office still retains the powers to disqualify and remove elected officials,” he said in a statement. communicated the IACHR.
After the controversy that arose, the magistrate of the Constitutional Court Cristina Pardo presented a paper in which she asserted that Congress was wrong to give jurisdictional powers to the officials of the Attorney General’s Office, among them: remove, suspend and disqualify, for which it will seek that only judges can touch public officials elected by popular vote, this, without affecting the vigilance that it has in cases related to corruption, abuse of power or mismanagement of public money.
If the proposal is approved, the norm would have an effect on the decisions already made by the Attorney General’s Office, that is, the sanctions determined since the law entered into force would be annulled due to the retroactive effects of the decision.
For its part, the Public Ministry has come out in defense of the modifications it carried out in 2022 and assured that its powers with respect to officials elected by popular vote comply with what is mentioned in the Constitution, which refers to the guarantees of citizens to vote and be elected.
“It should not be forgotten that, in order to protect the right to be elected of the subject exercising political opposition and consequently the voter’s right to have their choice respected, the Constitutional Court requires that it be a jurisdictional authority, regardless of its specialty, that know about the corresponding process instead of an administrative entity”, points out the document delivered by the Attorney General’s Office.
And he added: “The above, in order to ensure high independence and autonomy in making the respective decision and, with this, avoid scenarios of political persecution, thus achieving the same protection that stands out from the reading of the Inter-American Court.” with Infobae