The Presidency of the Republic This Friday he published the resume of Javier Gutiérrez Afanadorfor the position of expert commissioner appointed by the President for the Communications Regulatory Commission (CRC).
The publication occurs just at a time of tension between the Executive and the CRC, after the recent refusal to authorize a new speech by the President Gustavo Petro.
Profile and experience
Gutierrez is lawyer from the Externado University and has had a career in the public sector. He has worked as a contractor for entities such as the National Federation of Departments, the Rural Development Agency, ETB and the National Roads Institute.among others.
(You can read: Petro says that private TV concessionaires use channels to oppose).
His appointment reverses a three-year gap in the position: the vacancy opened after the departure of Sergio Martínez Medina in August 2022.
Javier Gutiérrez’s resume
Screenshot
Even so, his appointment comes at a delicate time, with strong questions about the limits between political power and the regulation of audiovisual content that involves the head of state.
The context of the presidential addresses
The CRC (more specifically the Audiovisual Contents session) has the power to decide whether or not to authorize a presidential address under criteria such as urgency, exceptionality, and thematic and temporal delimitation.
(You can read: Petro rejected the CRC’s decision to deny a request for a presidential address).
Recently, The entity rejected the Government’s request for a prime-time intervention on drug trafficking and decertification.
President Gustavo Petro in interview for RTVC
Youtube Presidency
According to the CRC, said speech did not comply “with the criteria of urgency, exceptional use or thematic delimitation, as there is no evidence of a serious, supervening or unavoidable circumstance that justifies the interruption of the programming of the country’s open television channels.”.
For President Petro, the decision was received as a form of censorship: “The president of the Republic of Colombia has been censured in his own country“, declared the president.
PORTFOLIO
