There are many, and very worrying, questions raised by the ruling of the Council of State, through which it is intended to declare the annulment of my election as first vice president of the Senate of the Republic of Colombia. Perhaps one of the most repeated is why for this entity the Historical Pact is a coalition of separate parties for some things but a majority party that acts as a bench for others?
In previous periods, the position from which I was stripped was consecutively in the hands of the Liberal Party, the U Party, Liberal again, the Democratic Center, the U twice in a row, Radical Change, the Conservative Party, and so on. Why, then, did the Council of State not apply the same criteria that it applies today, when none of these parties was a minority? This ruling had never been applied to any other party before.
In fact, when I was the second vice president of the House of Representatives in the 2019-2020 legislature, thanks to the Statute of the Opposition, the first vice president was Óscar Villamizar of the Democratic Center, times when said party was the first majority of the camera. And the Council of State? Fine, thanks.
I could also raise some more fundamental questions, such as, why is my election judged as part of an electoral coalition citing article 40 of Law 5 of 1992, when it indicates that the position is for a party? I must remind public opinion that I am part of the MAIS, a party that has four seats in the Senate, one of them from the indigenous constituency; And if 4 out of 108 senators is not being a minority, then what is?
These questions allow us to see that apparently a different evaluation criterion would be applied for the parties that are part of the Historical Pact, and another for those that for decades have shared power. This situation affects the healthy exercise of democracy and leads the country to a feeling of legal instability, since it cannot be that the same judicial entity has two criteria to rule on matters of popular election: the ruling against my election as vice president of the Senate, It is substantially contradictory with the bases that founded the rulings against Alexander López, César Pachón and Roy Barreras, all of the Pact. The same thing happens with the argument with which they removed Fuerza Ciudadana’s legal status. Why, on the contrary, was the status of the Democratic Center not investigated due to Odebrecht resources in the campaign of its presidential candidate Óscar Iván Zuluaga?