The Senate of Colombia approved, this Monday, October 24, the bill presented by the Government that seeks to lay the foundations for the policy of ‘total peace’, which opens the avenues of negotiation and judicial submission for armed groups, and which is close to being definitively approved.
The Senate confirmed the approval of the bill 181/2022 “through which Law 418 of 1997 is modified, added and extended, the State peace policy is defined, and other provisions are dictated”, with 62 votes in favor and 13 against.
“The total peace project has been approved in the Senate without any limitations“, reported, after the vote, Senator Ivan Cepeda, one of the speakers.
This means that the Governmentwill be able to carry out all kinds of political negotiation processes and submission to justice that include, without any exclusion, the armed groups, the criminal structures that operate today throughout the country“added the senator.
Cepeda considered the approval of ‘total peace’ as a “fundamental step to achieve an end to all forms of violence“.
Nevertheless, the project approved in the Senate is not the one that came from the Government, since the hemicycle did not give the green light to the social Service For Peace, an amendment understood as an alternative to compulsory military service and that this Tuesday will return to the debate in the House of Representatives to try to get ahead.
This article was left out of the final approval of the bill due to the absence of some members of the Government caucus. However, if this Tuesday is approved in the House of Representatives, must go back to conciliation in the Senate.
Articles 16 and 17, which proposed a I pardon young people detained in the framework of the 2021 social protests, although in the same way, congressmen from the government bench will present a new bill on Tuesday that seeks that purpose.
Senator Iván Cepeda (right), one of the bill’s rapporteurs.
Since his arrival at the Presidency on August 7, Gustavo Petro has insisted on promoting a ‘total peace’, an ambitious bet with which it seeks to sit down to negotiate with the groups outside the law that still operate in the country and achieve an agreement like the one that was reached at the time with the extinct guerrilla of the Farc, which includes some type of legal agreement or submission to justice.
But for now the legislation only allows him to resume talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN), since the negotiation protocols were already signed by the government of Juan Manuel Santos.
Petro has assured that he has received letters from almost all the groups that operate in the country, although he has stressed that, for the moment, they are simple missives and you don’t know how sincere they are.
If, this Tuesday, the green light is obtained in the House of Representatives, the bill will only have conciliation in both chambers so that the Government can start working on the policies of ‘total peace’.
EFE
