House approves bill in second debate that seeks to ban bullfighting

“Happiness is very great,” said the liberal representative for Bogotá, Juan Carlos Losada, after learning that the Colombian House of Representatives decided to approve the bill on Tuesday that seeks to ban fighting bullfighting in the country.

According to the congressman, this is the seventh attempt made by the legislature to end a practice that is considered traditional by some conservative sectors, but which others describe as an act of cruelty to cattle. “It's a long time of struggle, of battle, and we did it,” said the politician, who was moved after learning that the initiative received 87 votes in favor of banning bullfighting in the country.

Congressmen Juan Manuel Daza, from the Centro Democrático party, and Carlos Eduardo Acosta, from Colombia Justa Libres, had submitted a request to close the project, but it did not receive much reception. In total, Losada's project received only 28 votes against.

The representative for the Santander department, environmental activist and activist of the Green Alliance party, Fabian Díaz, co-authored the project and also celebrated the overwhelming vote in favor of the end of the brave party in the country. He expressed his happiness through his Twitter account.

The next step of this bill is for it to pass two debates in the Senate of the Republic, which must necessarily take place before June 20 and, legally, it can only begin to be discussed within fifteen working days — that is, the second week of May. If senators do not open priority space on their agenda for the project, it will collapse.

Although the idea might not be received with the same welcome and diligence in the upper chamber of the Colombian Congress, Losada said it is worth celebrating because, “this Congress is evolving in the matter of animals.”

In addition to Losada and Diaz, parliamentarians Ángel María Gaitan Pulido, José Daniel López Jiménez and Inti Raúl Asprilla Reyes are co-authors of Bill 410 of 2020.

The initiative to end bullfighting considers the rights of animals as sentient beings that deserve special protection, so the focus of its argument is based on the right to life.

It considers that there is a constitutional basis that would allow the elimination of this activity, without giving notice to the thesis put forward that it is a practice in the process of extinction. To neutralize the legal argument of the right to work, the bill establishes an article aimed at the thousands of families who have made bullfighting a job.

Under the strategy of economic conversion, they will be provided with financing possibilities after six months of the law, in order to avoid a strong impact on unemployment, which is negatively affected by the effects of the pandemic.

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