The humanitarian crisis that is being experienced in El Catatumbo due to the clashes between the ELN guerrilla and FARC dissidents, gives no more respite and because of this, President Gustavo Petro announced that he will declare a state of internal commotion and economic emergency; in order to attend to the affected population as soon as possible.
The worsening of forced displacements, the increase in murders of social leaders and the economic needs of the inhabitants of departments such as Norte de Santander and Cesar that have been left in the middle of the war, were some of the scourges. who influenced this to happen and for which the head of state asked for everyone’s help.
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While waiting for the decree(s) that will regulate President Petro’s announcement to be known, Portafolio spoke with five analysts about the viability of this decision and they warned that once again the country is on the verge of facing a scenario like that of La Guajira. , where the decisions of the Executive fell because they went against what was established in the Constitution.
Mutual exclusion
One of the first points of view was that of Jorge Restrepo, professor at the Javeriana University and director of the Resource Center for Conflict Analysis (Cerac). This expert maintains that the first thing to take into account is that the Constitution establishes that states of internal commotion and economic emergency cannot be declared simultaneously for the same reasons.
President Gustavo Petro
“The reasons why they are declared, although they may be linked to the crisis in El Catatumbo, they have to be different, that is, either due to the impact of that crisis in economic and social terms in the case of the economic emergency and In the case of internal commotion due to the conditions of alteration or public disorder, the alteration of public order that leads to declaring internal commotion,” he said.
Likewise, he indicated that it is necessary to pay close attention to the way in which it is going to be applied, given that it should be delimited for the affected populations, where restrictions could be ordered. rights such as mobility, assembly and decisions on territorial powers.
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Eye of the Court
According to the 1991 Constitution, internal commotion is one of several types of state of emergency that grants the president special powers to confront imminent threats against the State and can be declared for a period of no more than 90 days, extendable for up to two periods. equal with the approval of Congress.
However, for this to be averted, there needs to be an eventuality. unexpected, which has not happened at this time, as warned by the former vice minister of Finance, Juan Alberto Londoño, for whom everything will once again be in the hands of the high courts.
“The Catatumbo and public order crisis may warrant extraordinary measures, but for this it is necessary to know the justification and what extraordinary measures are going to be taken. This is the total failure of La Paz, to strengthen the public force an economic emergency is not required,” he stated.
Displaced from Catatumbo.
That said, Londoño was “convinced that the economic emergency will fall. Faced with the internal commotion, we must surround the Court so that it carefully analyzes and, if authorized, works so that we have all the controls against possible abuses by the Executive.”
José Manuel Restrepo, rector of the EIA University, expressed the same opinion, highlighting that social networks are not the means to inform decisions of such magnitude, given that they talk about altering the natural state of things and this type of events usually generates many doubts among the community and encourages uncertainty.
“It is important to know that for the same reason you cannot declare simultaneously an internal commotion and an economic emergency. Then there is a legal error that needs to be answered and the only way is through the reasons that motivated one and the other, which I repeat, cannot be the same,” he explained.
Restrepo Abondano also spoke about the economic emergency and noted that “it is important to know if there is reason to decree it, that is, there are supervening and exceptional events that would motivate the economic emergency and it is important to note that the Ombudsman’s Office has long ago ruled about the reality of Catatumbo, Then the question is whether or not there really exists a supervening fact.”
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judicial control
In the face of internal commotion, the Constitution establishes that “in the event of a serious disturbance of public order that imminently threatens institutional stability, the security of the State, or citizen coexistence, and that cannot be averted through the use of ordinary powers of the police authorities, the President of the Republic, with the signature of all the ministers, may declare a state of internal commotion, throughout the Republic or part of it.”
Due to this, for the former Minister of Finance, Juan Camilo Restrepo, the Constitutional Court will review if there is an unexpected situation or if the measures are directly related to the emergency in El Catatumbo, to determine whether it is valid or not and if it goes against the Government, reverse its administrative acts.
“Everything then depends on the support provided by the decree. If it is not demonstrated there that the situation in El Catatumbo is unexpected (emerging) or that it cannot be handled with ordinary powers, it may suffer the fate of the declaration of constitutional exception in La Guajira,” he added.
ELN.
In this sense, the consultations closed with Mauricio Cárdenaswho was also in charge of the Treasury portfolio, and believed that the situation in Catatumbo is a long-standing problem, not a supervening event, while warning that the Government could take advantage of the emergency to introduce rejected taxes, such as the tax to the estate, which would be inappropriate from their point of view.
“The message to the President is that he should not seek to solve, with the excuse of El Catatumbo, the fiscal problems that the National Government has. Be careful, solutions are being sought for this region and it is possible that additional income or a state of exception may be required, but not for there anymore, not for the entire country,” he warned.
The last precedent of a declaration of internal commotion occurred in the second government of Álvaro Uribe Vélez, in 2008, due to a prolonged judicial strike that threatened a mass release and before that, Uribe himself had decreed the commotion upon coming to power in 2002, in the most violent period of the Colombian internal armed conflict.
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