The president, Gustavo Petro, and the nation’s attorney general, Francisco Barbosa, met this Easter Monday at the Casa de Nariño to discuss the objections that the prosecutor has filed against the bill for submission to justice.
During that meeting that lasted three hours, the president was accompanied by Minister of Justice, Néstor Osuna, and the chief of staff, Laura Sarabiawhile Barbosa arrived with the deputy prosecutor Martha Mancera.
After the meeting, Palacio reiterated his version that the articles of subjection to justice “has the firm objective of forcefully confronting the actions of drug trafficking and, also, protecting growers, who are the weakest link in the chain.”
According to Barbosa, Petro accepted the proposal that in the presentation of the submission law, only the benefits for small growers are taken into account. “The conclusion was reached that it is necessary to delimit this project in relation to the fact that the Prosecutor’s Office is going to make the collective submission, but leave it much more restrictive in relation to the procedures to see if we have a general framework and that general framework has some developments,” said the prosecutor at the end of the meeting.
The Presidency maintained that at the meeting The prosecutor’s doubts about the text of the subjugation law were addressedQuestions that arise after Barbosa alerted two weeks ago -in the framework of an international forum in the Dominican Republic- that this document would be seeking the legalization of the drug trafficking chain.
“I feel very comfortable with what will be reached in the presentation. What is agreed is that there is no benefit to importers, nor to sellers nor to producers of narcotic drugs, ”Barbosa explained at the end of the procedure with Petro.
The Casa de Nariño affirmed that the parties strengthen collaboration in interdiction operations and that the weekly work tables with the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Public Force will continue with the objective of consolidating the illegal drug seizure figures.
The meeting of this Easter Monday of Petro and Barbosa was the third of the year between the president and the head of the accusing entity to discuss the total peace projects that have been at the center of criticism from the Prosecutor’s Office.
In this meeting they also addressed the non-decriminalization of incest and lack of food assistance, a proposal that the Government had put on the table in recent weeks, but aroused objections from a sector of the citizenry. In addition, they agreed to monitor the arrest warrants of the murderers of those reinstated.
Both had met on February 20 and January 30. However, the appointment of this month of April had a particular situation, since The Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the president’s son, Nicolás Petrofor his alleged ties to drug traffickers from whom he would have received financing for his father’s campaign for the 2022 elections.
And although it was Petro himself who asked the Prosecutor’s Office to open the pages against his son, in microphones Barbosa maintained that in this meeting they did not address this process carried out by the accusing entity and that removed Nicolás Petro from the political career for the regionals of 2023.
Both the Presidency and Barbosa assured that it was a cordial meeting. In the end, the prosecutor ruled that he is not in opposition to the Executive, but that he is fulfilling his constitutional duties: “What we are doing is being purposeful with the country. Those who have been raising ideas that the prosecutor became a person of the opposition are wrong, fulfilling constitutional functions is not political participation”.