On July 5, the president-elect, Gustav Petro, made his first statements about what his government will be, and said that pbluntwill see a reform to eliminate the Attorney General’s Office.
(Elimination of the Attorney General’s Office, a proposal that Petro will promote).
Petro pointed out that this initiative seeks to align with the American Convention on Human Rights. With this decision, the Attorney General’s Office would pass to the judiciary and, therefore, the decision will be discussed in Congress through eight debates and a constitutional reform.
To achieve this, Petro said, it would be necessary unify the functions and responsibilities of the Attorney General’s Office with those of the Attorney General’s Officewith the aim of focusing all investigative work against corruption through the creation of an “anti-corruption prosecutor’s office”.
In this regard, Gabriel Dereix, Professor of the Faculty of Society, Culture and Creativity of the Grancolombiano Polytechnic, stated that: “If the intention is to reform the structure of the Attorney General’s Office (…) it would be carried out through Congress or through a constitutional referendum; but, if what is intended is to put an end to the institution, it is necessary to resort to the provisions of judgment C-551 of 2003, in which the Constitutional Court establishes that the control of the reform of the Constitution due to procedural defects in the formation of the reformatory act, also includes the vices of competence”.
This means that Congress is prohibited from substituting the Constitution, since its competence only allows it to amend it. “The only one authorized to replace the Constitution is the people, the true constituent power,” added the expert.
(Counterweights faced by the first leftist government in Colombia).
In this regard, Dereix also clarified that the substitution of the Constitution would imply resorting to a substitution test that the Court has outlined through its jurisprudence, and that, in general terms, includes six elements.
First, it must be a judgment on the competence of the body in charge of advancing the
reform. Second, it is required to enunciate the defining aspects of the identity of the Constitution that are supposed to have been replaced by the reformatory act.
Then it must also have a specific statement, as well as a defining and configured element in the Colombian Political Constitution, and it is important that the examination of the accused act establishes what is the legal scope regarding the defining elements that identify the Constitution.
In addition, it is necessary to contrast the aforementioned premises with the judgment criteria that the Court indicates. And finally, to verify if the reform replaces a defining element that identifies the Constitution for another completely different one.
BRIEFCASE
