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The mayoralty of Claudia López, through its Ministry of Finance, sent the Constitutional Court a concept in which it states various criticism of decree 444 of 2020, through which the Government created the Emergency Mitigation Fund (FOME) to attend the health and economic emergency due to the coronavirus pandemic.
For this resource bag, the Government borrows two funds that have savings from the municipalities and are managed by the mayors and governments: the Savings and Stabilization Fund (FAE), which has the money saved from royalties; and the National Pension Fund of Territorial Entities (Fonpet), that it has the monies that the municipalities must keep to take charge of the pension liabilities.
In the midst of the automatic review of this decree, the study of which corresponded to the magistrate of the Constitutional Court Carlos Bernal, the mayor of López, who from the beginning expressed his rejection of this rule, sent the high court a harsh opinion.
(Also read: Mayors ask the Court that the Government not use its funds due to a pandemic).
There are four objections that the Secretary of the Treasury of Claudia López made to the decree:
They are all oriented towards the fourth article, which is the one that establishes what the FOME money will be used for. Given this, the mayor’s office asks to condition the eligibility of that article because, he assures in his first criticism, the government did not include health care within the six uses for which the Fund is directed. This, despite the fact that article two of this decree says that the main objective is to obtain resources to attend to health.
Despite the fact that the central axis should be health, the fourth article, says the mayor, never refers to this service and right, so “it excludes the possibility of making use of these resources for the health care of people affected by the virus, medical personnel, the strengthening of health care entities, the adaptation of new care centers, the purchase of material and equipment, and in general, what is necessary to stop a pandemic. ”
It excludes the possibility of making use of these resources for the health care of people affected by the virus.
Not including health within the uses of the fund, argues the mayor’s office, implies a regressivity in this right -at a critical moment due to the pandemic- because, on the other hand, it does authorize “new expenses by the Colombian State, without establishing any related to the right to health “. The mayor criticizes that the decree includes aspects that “although they may be very important, from the point of view of growth and the balance of the economy, they are not relevant to health,” which was one of the central axes of the declare a state of emergency.
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Secondly, The mayor’s office ensures that the decree does not include the vulnerable population within the uses that FOME resources may have.
“This lack of inclusion of the attention of this population contradicts the content of the declaration of economic emergency, which makes explicit reference to people engaged in informal activities, for whom compulsory social isolation increases their conditions of vulnerability, as many of them they carry out their activities in the public space or through necessarily face-to-face contact with the users of the services they provide, “assures the mayor’s office.
According to the Bogotá mayor’s office, not including the vulnerable population as recipient of the fund’s resources violates their right to material or real equality.
This is how, says the Bogotá mayor’s office, the decree does not prioritize public spending on health or health care for the vulnerable population, despite decree 417 that declared a state of emergency emphasizes these two points. Instead, it does use the money for other fronts.
The mayor’s office says that, without denying the importance in the “medium and long term of, for example, economic support to public, mixed or private entities that carry out economic activities of national interest, health care and the poor and vulnerable population become problems of urgent solution in the short term”
(Also: The Government’s response to 27 questions from the Court about prisons)
Health care and the poor and vulnerable population become problems of urgent solution
Thus, the mayoralty assures that the Court should declare Article 4 of Decree 444 exequible, as long as it is understood that health care and care for the poor and vulnerable population are possible uses of the FOME.
Transitional liquidity support to the financial sector
The last point of criticism of the Bogota city hall to the decree is related to the fact that, according to the fourth article, With resources from this fund created for the pandemic, “operations of temporary liquidity support to the Financial System” can be carried out.
The mayor’s office criticizes that such a possibility exists because, he assures, when the state of emergency was declared, the lack of liquidity of the financial system for said declaration was never argued, nor was it seen as an effect generated by the emergence of the coronavirus.
Thus, the mayor’s office says “the transitional liquidity support to the financial system has no direct or specific relationship with the declared state of emergency, insofar as it is understood as direct support for private banking. ”
He criticizes that the decree does not explain why supporting the liquids of the financial system helps to ward off the crisis caused by the health emergency. With this, he asked the Court to declare number three of article fourth of the decree exequible, which speaks of that support for the financial sector, as long as it is understood addressed to the first and second floor state banks to meet the economic and social needs of the business sector, “without it being interpreted as temporary support for private banking.”
JUSTICE
