The legal secretary of the Presidency of Colombia, Augusto Ocampo, announced on Saturday his voluntary resignation to the American visa in solidarity with President Gustavo Petro, whom Washington revoked his Friday for calling soldiers from that country to “disobey orders”, during an act in New York.
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“As a legal secretary of the Presidency of the Republic I have decided to voluntarily resign to my visa of the United States. I do it in solidarity with President Gustavo Petro and because I am convinced that Colombia’s dignity is above any privilege,” Ocampo said in a statement released by the president himself in X.
The Legal Secretariat of the Presidency is an advisory and executing body that elaborates bills, reviews decrees and provides legal advice to the President, to the Council of Ministers and other presidential units. Ocampo, lawyer with specialization in administrative law, He was appointed legal secretary in August 2022, at the beginning of the Petro government.
In addition, this year, he held the position of Minister in charge of Justice after the resignation of Ángela María Buitrago.
President Gustavo Petro and his counterpart Donald Trump
Private archive
The decision is known a day after the US Department of State A Protected Manifestation in New York, in which he asked American soldiers that disobey orders from his government to facilitate the creation of an eventual “multinational salvation army that would support the Palestinian people.
“This morning, the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, went to the American soldiers in a New York street by urging them to disobey orders and incite violence. For these reckless and provocative actions, we will revoke the Visa de Petro,”the State Department said last night.
Petro, who returned this Saturday to Colombia, responded to Washington, pointing out that the measure violates the rules of diplomatic immunity that protect the heads of state who go to the UN General Assembly and considered that, for that reason, the body’s headquarters “cannot continue in New York.”
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The president subtracted importance from the cancellation of his visa, argued that by also having Italian passport he can go to the US with the travel authorization.
“I don’t need visa but this, because I am not only a Colombian citizen but a European citizen, and I really consider myself a free person in the world,” The president said today in X. The granting of the east, however, is not automatic for the citizens of the exempt countries of the mandatory visa and is equally subject to the approval of the US authorities.
In the mid -1990s, the United States also revoked the visa to the then Colombian president, Ernesto Samper, after the scandal for the financing of his Drug trafficking money campaign.
EFE
