Colombia: ex-president Alvaro Uribe resigns again from his mandate as senator

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

The former president explains that he can no longer return to the Senate because of his house arrest for two weeks. He is in fact being prosecuted in a case of witness tampering by the Supreme Court. With this sleight of hand, he seems to want to escape prosecution once again.

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In 2018, Alvaro Uribe had already resigned from this post, after being subpoenaed by the Supreme Court. Obviously, he had said to himself that by no longer being a senator, he would escape this court, the only institution empowered to prosecute parliamentarians.

He had finally quickly reversed his decision, and the process had run its course. The former president from 2002 to 2010, senator since 2014, tireless opponent of the peace agreements that ended decades of civil war, is being prosecuted for alleged manipulation of a witness against an opponent.

Escaping the Supreme Court

In fact, it was originally he who lodged a complaint against this left-wing opponent, Ivan Cepeda, but the court dismissed the case and opened an investigation against him. Alvaro Uribe is the undisputed leader of the hard right in the country, and he enjoys the backing of current President Ivan Duque.

This time he tries to use the fact that the Supreme Court has placed him under house arrest  : no longer able to go to the Senate, he resigns from his post. By this sleight of hand, he once again hopes to escape the scope of the Supreme Court, which he accuses of being biased against him. Not sure that this is enough for the file to be taken up by the prosecution, as he hopes.

Alvaro Uribe is the first ex-president to be arrested in Colombia. At the same time, he is the most popular and influential politician in the country, not least for his uncompromising policies towards the FARC guerrillas. A large part of the population also rejects him for the multiple scandals of corruption and human rights violations that have affected those around him.

The Senate accepted his resignation, Alvaro Uribe faces eight years in prison.

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• Colombia
• Alvaro Uribe

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