After last week’s controversy between President Petro and Prosecutor Barbosa regarding the institutional hierarchy, it is expected that in the next few hours the date of the meeting proposed by the Head of State with the High Courts will be announced, where the main message it would convey is that it respects the independence of public powers.
It has also been known that the President of the Republic would seek a meeting with the prosecutor Francisco Barbosa Delgado after this clash they had, as a result of the fact that the President told him that “the Prosecutor forgets one thing, that the Constitution orders him to. I am the head of state, therefore, the ‘head of it’”.
Barbosa responded that: “I, as Attorney General, was elected by the Supreme Court of Justice, and the President is not my ‘boss’ nor does he investigate me nor am I under his orders.”
For months now, the Head of State and the Attorney General have disputed on several occasions about Barbosa’s observations on the measures that are part of the peace policy and that the Government develops in order to start talks with the multi-crime armed groups with the expectation of reaching a negotiation so that they take advantage of justice, in exchange for penal benefits.
Barbosa Delgado has also made objections to the prison humanization project promoted by the Government. The Attorney General considers that in these initiatives, among others, drug traffickers would be favored by not extradition; criminals would keep a good part of the illegally obtained resources and those convicted of serious crimes would be released from prison.
The most recent controversy was because President Gustavo Petro via Twitter asked the Prosecutor’s Office to explain the complaints he received from citizens threatened by the ‘Clan del Golfo’, which he allegedly did not respond to, and which would have cost the lives of more than 200 people.
“The lives of 200 people were not only put in danger, but were also murdered by the ‘Clan del Golfo’ when, according to journalist Gonzalo Guillén, the Prosecutor’s Office already knew the list before the murder,” said the president.
The Prosecutor’s Office assured in a statement that the events mentioned occurred between 2008 and 2010 in Magdalena. He shared that they have been investigated and the inquiries continue.
Faced with the affirmations of President Petro, the Supreme Court of Justice stated that it “registers with great concern the erroneous interpretation of Article 115 of the Constitution.”
At the same time, he was emphatic that “the Attorney General of the Nation, who holds the qualities of a high court magistrate, does not have a hierarchical superior and is chosen by the Supreme Court of Justice from a short list drawn up by the President of the Republic, is an official whose mission is clearly regulated by the legal order and framed in the autonomy and independence of the Judicial Branch. Ignoring or misinterpreting the foundations of our Rule of Law creates uncertainty, fragmentation and institutional instability”.
Openness to dialogue
From Portugal, where his week-long trip to Europe ends, the Head of State said that: “I accept the call of the Honorable Supreme Court of Justice. I respect and will respect the autonomy and independence of the Attorney General’s Office and all branches of public power.”
For his part, the Minister of the Interior, Luis Fernando Velasco, assured that “the President and the Government abide by the call of the Cortes, we have no type of modesty to say yes: the President is the head of state, but he is not the functional head of the other branches of public power, has to articulate policies”.
Velasco added that: “the President, in exchange for confronting the Cortes, tells them ‘I take up their call, let’s sit down, talk and put together what we have to put together’.”
On the other hand, it was learned that the General Prosecutor’s Office will present today a report on the investigations and prosecutions against members of the ‘Clan del Golfo’.