The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petroreported this Friday the death of 14 people as a result of the cold snap arctic that is hitting the north of the country and demanded that the Constitutional Court revoke the suspension of the economic emergency decree “to address the disaster and its consequences.”
“We are facing a fact (…) that we explicitly described in the emergency decree that the Court suspended. There are 14 dead, 9,000 homes destroyed, almost 50,000 families affected, 35,000 hectares flooded and 300,000 affected,” said the president in a publication on social networks after a meeting of the National Disaster Risk Management Council.
Petro stressed that the “arctic cold current” that currently affects departments such as Córdoba or Sucre is unprecedented, nor are the “amounts of rain” collected in the region, while warning of the arrival this weekend of “a second arctic cold front” that could cause “the economic, environmental and social emergency in the region” to spread to the rest of the country.
“We have an arctic cold front over Colombia. “It’s not a joke,” he added before pointing out that “cutting budgets” in this situation is “suicide” and warning that “the Army (will act) by tearing down the dams that prevent water flows in the disaster area and the stolen lands will be restored to the swamps and canals to mitigate the floods.”
Thus, the head of the Colombian Executive criticized “the greed with which water reservoirs have been managed” and has denounced that the operation of gas thermoelectric and hydroelectric plants is oriented to benefit “some landowners with influence in the courts.”
These statements come after Petro himself has deplored the decision of the Constitutional Court to suspend the economic emergency decree, considering that the court acted hastily and favoring financial interests over the general interest.
The economic emergency decree was implemented by the Colombian Government after the country’s Congress overturned the tax reform in early December, which was expected to raise 16.3 billion pesos (about 3.7 billion euros) to complete the 2026 budget.
