The controversial diplomatic appointments that the president has authorized Gustavo Petro –among them that of the former senator Juan Manuel Corzo as ambassador to Paraguay or Sebastian Guanumen as consul in Chile-, have taken career civil servants from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to intervene at least 22 demands for apparent irregularities.
This was announced by the president of the Union of OfficialsMaría Angélica García, who warned that many of the recent appointments in embassies or consulates do not meet the legal requirements. Along these lines, he insisted that the merit should be the guiding principle of the foreign service.
“We have had to demand 22 provisional appointments in career positions that did not meet the requirements and we are forced to continue doing so until the administration adequately justifies that those positions could not be filled by career civil servants”, Garcia said in statements to Blu Radio.
The most recent controversy is related to the appointment of Moisés Ninco Daza as ambassador of Colombia in Mexico. According to the officials, who have already announced another lawsuit, it is a character who He doesn’t even have a professional degree.
“Accredits only two years and five months of experience labor, without any relation to diplomacy. The functions manual of the Chancellery establishes as requirements to hold the position of ambassador to have professional degree, graduate degree and related professional experience. None is met in this case,” they argued from the Union of Diplomatic and Consular Career Officials.
The appointments of President Gustavo Petro to diplomatic posts are so controversial that they have caused friendly fire in your bench and they managed to agree on the petristas with the opposition and even with the unions of the Chancellery.
The same head of Petrism in the Chamber, representative David Racero, sent a letter to Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva a month ago claiming that he has been a month without response on the designations and asking him to 50% of promotions correspond to diplomatic career profiles and not to political quotas.
The profiles that cause concern go beyond the already well-known cases of Armando Benedetti as ambassador in Venezuela (pending in the Supreme Court of Justice) or Leon Fredy Munoz in Nicaragua (investigated for transporting cocaine).
The landing of the protagonist of the “petrovideos” Sebastian Guanumen as consul in Chile, of the bishop of Cambio Radical Temistocles Ortega to the Embassy in Santiago and the curator Juan Manuel Corzo the Paraguayan delegation has Petrism’s hair on end. Such is the paradox that Corzo’s son, Juan Felipe, is a representative to the Chamber for the Democratic Center: the party of the fierce opposition to Petro.