The National Electoral Council (CNE) ordered the holding of a National Convention and the modification of the statutes to guarantee the full participation of the former vice-presidential candidate Marelen Castillo and to modify the figure of “Founding President”, created for the engineer Hernández , during electoral campaign.
According to the Electoral Council, possible breaches were found in relation to the call to the Convention and the participation of representative Castillo in that process. In turn, it was determined that although the figure of “Founding President” was changed to that of “Honorary Member”, it continues to maintain the characteristics that were ordered to be eliminated.
All this legal scenario will be analyzed by the Plenary Chamber of the National Electoral Council, which will have to define what will be the future of the party of the candidate who achieved more than 10 million votes in the 2022 elections, the date for which Gustavo Petro was consolidated as president. of the Colombians.
In the event that it loses legal status, the League of Anti-Corruption Rulers would not be able to endorse candidates in the October 2023 elections, in which Engineer Hernández is expected to participate as a candidate for the Santander Governorate.
Debate around the legal status of the Santander politician
In February 2023, the National Electoral Council granted legal status to the League of Anti-Corruption Rulers, a party led by Hernández, also determined that congresswoman Marelen Castillo, former vice-presidential formula of the community, may participate in all decisions.
This through administrative act No. 1449 of 2023 in which the Council ordered that within a period of three months the League of Anti-Corruption Rulers would have to carry out; “the National Convention of the Party”; on the other hand, the electoral court determined that this community must guarantee the citizen Marelen Castillo, the participation and intervention in all decisions that compromise the attributes, duties, rights and obligations that derive from the legal status of the party”.
In addition, the National Electoral Council said that the party has the obligation to process their mandates from the date of issuance of resolution 1449 of 2023.
It is worth mentioning that the relationship between Marelen Castillo and the political community was affected by November 2022, when she filed an appeal against the decisions made by Hernández in the founding assembly of the political party.
In the move, condensed into 87 pages, presented by Juan Pablo Lozada, Castillo’s lawyer, a basic argument is exposed: for the representative to the Chamber, who achieved her seat thanks to the Opposition Statute, the founding assembly of the party was made up of in a “clandestine” manner, and to which she was not summoned to participate in collective decisions, as a member of the presidential formula that obtained the second vote in the second round.
By October 2022, the National Electoral Council temporarily suspended the party’s legal status, thanks to a complaint filed by a citizen who explained that representative Marelen Castillo had been excluded from the collective’s statutes. All this occurs in the midst of the differences between Castillo and Hernández, which was evidenced by an audio revealed by Caracol Radio.
In the recording broadcast by the aforementioned medium, engineer Rodolfo Hernández is heard asking the representative for money to reimburse the salary he was paid while they were campaigning for the Presidency: “I am not angry with Erica, nor with you. While you were campaigning, who paid your salary? they were?”.
To which Marelen Castillo replied that they had agreed that if they won the presidential elections and she was vice president, “later they would pay.” with Infobae