Prosecutor's Office reveals delays in party funding in report on Opposition Statute

Before the House of Representatives, the Attorney General of the Nation, Margarita Caballo, presented the third report monitoring the rights established in Law 1909 of 2018, also known as the Statute of the Political Opposition. A statutory law that establishes the “general framework for the exercise and special protection of the right to opposition of political organizations and certain rights of independent organizations”.

The report presented this Tuesday afternoon has as its timeline from October 2020 to March 31, 2021. At the beginning of her speech, the official called on all the institutions involved in the statute to “ensure the conditions of respect for democratic values, to lay the foundations for a process of reconciliation and overcoming violence throughout the country.”

He then acknowledged progress in the exercise of the Statute of the Opposition and the guarantees that have been presented by the National Electoral Council, “we also pose a series of challenges that are yet to be met by virtue of these four years of implementation.”

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Among the purposes of this law, it is proposed to generate political alternatives, dissent, criticize, supervise and freely exercise political control over government management, through the instruments indicated in the statute, without prejudice to the rights enshrined in other laws.

The official stressed that the regulation of law 1909 of 2018 is a historic debt that is owed in Colombia. “I must acknowledge that we are paying off a debt that is enshrined in the 1991 Constitution. We have an obligation to comply with guarantees and advance the law,” Cabello explained during his speech.

With regard to the funding to which opposition political parties are entitled, “delays were detected in disbursements to political organizations declared in opposition, the Constitutional Court said that funding is a guarantee”. During the term of 2021, this funding amounted to $3,108,567,102 million for all opposing parties.

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Among the characterizations presented in the report, the Public Prosecutor's Office highlighted that at the national level there are 16 political parties, of which six declare themselves in opposition, five are governing and five others are independent. At the regional level, 5,882 political parties or movements were identified. Of these, 3,212 proclaim themselves related to the national Government, 2,288 to independence and 599 declared themselves in opposition to the mandate of Iván Duque.

On the side of the problems encountered, the prosecutor identified two as the most important; the first is that political organizations with legal personality that, even after the deadline, keep provisional records and the second is, that the same organizations submitted declarations extemporaneously or did not submit them.

He also noted that there is confusion about access to the right of reply, especially in the territories most affected by the armed conflict.

Among Cabello's other recommendations, the National Electoral Council is also advised to improve resource planning and allocation, coordination between the CNE, RTVC and the Communications Regulation Commission to update entity data records.

This last point refers to the appearance in the media: “it is necessary that public networks have updated costs and the delivery of resources for access to State media in the effective 2021″, he concluded.

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