The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, assured this Wednesday the diplomatic corps accredited in the country that the investigation opened by the National Electoral Council (CNE) against his 2022 campaign violates the “presidential jurisdiction.”
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This was reported by the Colombian Foreign Minister, Luis Gilberto Murillo.after the meeting that the president had with the ambassadors at the Casa de Nariño, headquarters of the Executive, in which they also talked about other topics such as COP16 and peace in the country.
“We propose that the central thing here is the protection of the presidential jurisdiction (…) that added to the presidential jurisdiction, President Petro has a special condition due to the precautionary measures that are within the framework of the decision of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights” , Murillo expressed in a statement to the press.
The CNE considered last week that Petro, as a candidate; his campaign manager, Ricardo Roa, and other members of his team must respond “for the alleged violation of the financing regime for electoral campaigns”, It is suspected that they exceeded the established spending limits and resorted to prohibited sources that they did not declare.
According to experts in constitutional issues, President Petro’s position is not at risk due to the investigation and formulation of charges by the CNE against his 2022 campaign for alleged violation of spending caps.
The president is convinced that the CNE’s actions are a “coup d’état” and even took the case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IDC Court) because it considers that this body has exceeded its functions and has not respected its presidential jurisdiction.
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Thus, Petro himself explained, in a message on his X account, that he met with the diplomatic corps to “explain to them step by step how the coup d’état in Colombia has developed and what will come in the coming months.”
“As president of the Republic, it is my duty to inform the world of the criminal alliance that has been forged against the popular vote in the country”noted the president.
For his part, the chancellor insisted that “With the decisions that have been made by an administrative body, which is also a non-political body, on the one hand the presidential jurisdiction is violated, but also that special condition of precautionary measures that the president has.”
The precautionary measures that Murillo speaks of come from the time in which Petro went to the Inter-American Court when the Attorney General’s Office (Public Ministry) suspended him in 2013 when He was mayor of Bogotá, for alleged irregularities in the processing of a garbage collection contract.
Then, the Inter-American Court determined that his political rights were affected by the disciplinary sanction of the Attorney General’s Office, who does not have the power to disqualify a democratically elected official.
Murillo pointed out that today was “an informative meeting, how diplomacy works; obviously there is an exchange of questions, answers, a very constructive dialogue and the diplomatic representatives accredited in Colombia inform their Governments, they have first-hand approaches that allow them to inform even better what they is happening”.
EFE
