Gustavo Bolivar regains second vice presidency of the Senate

After a long legal battle, Senator Gustavo Bolívar announced this Tuesday, March 15, that he will be running again as second vice-president of the Senate of the Republic, following a nullity ruling by the Council of State on the nomination of Ivan Name Vasquez.

The story of this legal struggle began when the Senator of Human Colombia lost the second vice presidency of the Senate on July 20, 2021, in the midst of a new parliamentary election, that day he lost a vote in which 66 senators voted blank while 32 others supported his nomination.

That fact forced Senate President Juan Diego Gomez to repeat the vote after a recess, the Green Alliance party nominated Ivan Name Vasquez for vice president, who won 67 votes in favor against one blank. On that day, Bolívar said that the election of Name Vasquez as a candidate for the vice presidency did not have the full support of the opposition parties.

In February of this year, the Council of State through its Fifth Section found the election of Senator Iván Leonidas Name Vasquez illegal, as second vice-president of the Senate of the Republic.

According to the Electoral Chamber of the Council of State, the consequence of repeating the vote with candidates other than the initial ones, only applies to elections to public corporations, as governor, mayor or in the first round of the presidential elections, but not to form the board of directors of the Senate of the Republic.

“With this procedure, it was determined that the Opposition Statute was not respected, because when the candidate ran for the candidate there was no unanimity required for a member of the Green Party to gain access to that dignity again during this same four-year period,” states the ruling of the beginning of 2022.

Although the date of the new nomination is not yet known, the statement of the Senator's task force, which was published by the media Un Cuarto de Hora, reads as follows: “With this historic result, Senator Gustavo Bolívar, together with the senators elected in sixteen Senate Seats, will begin work for the renewal of Congress and for the social transformations that Colombia needs, supporting the future President of the Republic in the creation of a country free of corruption and with opportunities, justice and equity for all”.

During the last legislative elections held on March 13, Bolívar, the top of the Senate list for the Historical Pact, was elected as the most voted candidate and will lead the country's first political force during the period 202-2026.

Bolívar is one of the leaders of the Historical Pact, a collective that seeks to become president of Colombia, headed by Gustavo Petro. Already with the political map in place, the presidential elections on May 29 are the most important milestone in the short term and the presidential debates are the spaces to win the votes to reach Casa de Nariño.

On the night of Monday, March 14, Semana with the presence of Ingrid Betancourt, Federico Gutiérrez and Gustavo Petro, through his Twitter account, Gustavo Bolívar shared three points that, in his opinion, stand out as conclusions of the debate.

He first referred to Betancourt's comments, after he revealed the state of depression in which he found Gustavo Petro when he visited him once at home. On the second point, he pointed out that the former mayor of Medellín bases his answers on “attacking Petro” and that he has “zero height to debate.” He nicknamed it “FicoFake”.

Finally, as a third conclusion, Gustavo Bolívar assured that “Petro has no contender”, in addition, he indicated that the candidate of the Historical Pact “is the only one who proposes and spends half the debate disrupting fake news.”

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