“I propose to sacrifice Human Colombia”: Gustavo Petro announces a national pact for 2022

This Saturday, Senator Gustavo Petro announced that he desists from continuing to seek the legal status of Human Colombia and proposes an alliance to win the majority of Congress and the Presidency in 2022, after the Government benches in Congress sank an article of the electoral code with which your political movement could have participated in the elections as just another political party.

In three tweets that the senator published this morning, he says that “the decision of Cambio Radical and Centro Democrático, which won the majority of Congress, to exclude significant groups of citizens, including Colombia Humana, from participating in coalitions for the elections from 2022, puts us before the decision to fight for the legal status of Colombia Humana on an independent and lonely list or sacrifice our legal existence to build the Historical Pact of Colombia and change the Congress of the Republic”.

That is why he proposed “sacrifice the legal existence of Colombia Humana and build the Historical Pact to change Congress, society and the Presidency of the Republic ”, he asserted. With this announcement, the former presidential candidate could join the movement that, apparently, will compete at the polls with the center-right movements that are already enlisting their coalitions.

The senator had already anticipated this decision on his Twitter account on December 17 when, after the refusal of Congress to grant him legal status, he said “I call to discuss the strategy to displace corruption and anti-democracy from Congress, and achieve a Parliament at the service of the citizenry. That is the priority before winning the presidency”.

In March 2019, the Council of State denied a tutelage filed by Senator Petro, seeking, again, the legal status that the National Electoral Council (CNE) had denied him in August 2018. At that time, the Council of State said that the CNE was clear on this point, explaining that to grant it, the movement must have “a vote not less than three percent (3%) of the votes validly cast in the national territory in elections of the House of Representatives or the Senate,” invalidating the 8 million votes it received in the presidential elections of 2018.

The sinking of the article

The communities that have the majorities in Congress decided to sink the proposal, considering that the article harmed all the parties. “This possibility affects all parties, generates a problem of proliferation of legal entities and goes against all the communities that make up 80% of those who are sitting here,” said Senator of Radical Change Germán Varón Cotrino.

If the article has been approved, Gustavo Petro, leader of Human Colombia, and who has already expressed his interest in arriving at the House of Nariño in 2022 to replace Iván Duque, could present his candidacy without restrictions and, have the economic benefits that other parties have.

César Lorduy, representative to the Chamber for the Radical Change party, and one of the speakers of the article, assured that the measure did not seek to benefit anyone. “The code does not have retroactive effects, but obviously each case will have to be analyzed particularly. The decision of an administrative authority is not enough, nor is it enough, to prevent, as a consequence of that ruling, the aspiration of a citizen, but it is necessary that a final judicial decision has been completed “, stressed.