MinMinas and national registrar face political controls in Congress this week

After the break for Holy Week, the Congress of the Republic will return to regular sessions and it is expected that in this return two very important political control sessions will take place: one on the elections, in which the National Registrar, Alexander Vega, will respond; and one on mining in which the Minister of Mines and Energy, Diego Mesa Puyo.

The first debate will be the mining debate, which will take place on Wednesday, April 20. The space will be led by the Fifth Committee of the House of Representatives and the focus will be on Colombia's oil policy and fracking.

It should be noted that this last point is crucial considering that before the end of March, the National Environmental Licensing Authority (ANLA) granted Ecopetrol the license to start the Kalé fracking pilot project in Puerto Wilches (Santander). This has caused controversy because opinions are divided and it has even been reported that the environmental impact study was not socialized to the community.

Entities linked to the project ensure that fracking projects have all the necessary measures to ensure that the initiative does not leave environmental impacts and, on the contrary, benefit the community. Likewise, they have pointed out that it is not understood why there are those who want to torpedo the process.

Despite these statements, the Government, and even the inhabitants of the municipality, have insisted on the environmental detriment to which this project may result, noting that the Magdalena Medio area is one of the most important in the country and they fear that local fauna and flora will be affected, which in turn would affect their main economic activities.

For this reason, in addition to the minister of mines, the ministers of finance, José Manuel Restrepo; and of the environment, Carlos Eduardo Correa; the president of Ecopetrol, Felipe Bayón; the president of the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH), José Armando Zamora and the General Director of the Mining Planning Unit are also cited. Energy (UPME), Christian Jaramillo Herrera.

The second debate, and perhaps the most anticipated, will be the one related to the elections and will take place on April 21 at 7:00 a.m. at the Felipe Fabian Orozco Sessions Venue. The space, which will be led by the Special Monitoring and Monitoring Committee, aims to learn about the most important events associated with the elections on March 13, which have been controversial due to the number of reported irregularities.

Among the problems are corruption of the suffragant, personal falsehood, disruption to the democratic contest and fraudulent voting. The Prosecutor's Office was notified of 131 reports of possible electoral crimes filed through the Immediate Reception Unit for Electoral Transparency (Uriel). It should be noted that this was notified in the national territory, since in the elections abroad, the Prosecutor's Office also learned about 62 complaints, which will be evaluated to establish whether there is merit to open a formal case.

In addition, more than 400 complaints were reported for irregularities in the pre-counting and completion of E-14 forms. Even because of this fact, the Attorney General's Office ordered to investigate Registrar Alexander Vega and this Tuesday asked to inquire into all the movements of the entity. Thus, it will be necessary to find out about the parameters for choosing the voting juries, the registration and registration of voters, as well as the relationship of the National Registry Office with one of the contractors.

In addition to the registrar, this debate must also be attended by the Minister of the Interior, Daniel Palacio Martínez; the Regulatory President of the National Electoral Council, Judge Cesar Augusto Abreo Mendez; the Attorney General, Francisco Barbosa Delgado; and the Attorney General of the Nation, Margarita Cabello Blanco.

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