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The risks of a constitutional assembly
For an eventual peace agreement to be lasting and legitimate, it is vital that citizens ratify it at the ballot box. As my colleague Rodrigo Uprimny showed in his Op-Eds, the challenge is finding the appropriate mechanism: for it to be participatory and democratic, but at the same time resistant to political forces aimed at sabotaging the peace process or taking advantage of it in order to dismantle the 1991 Constitution.
Read MoreHow to ratify peace?
The democratic ratification of any peace agreement is imperative, just as I explained throughout my previous Op-Ed. But, which should be the mechanism? Is a law enough? Or is it necessary to take into account other devices with a greater participatory component, such as a referendum?
Read MoreThe Ecuadorian candidate for the IACH: The other path of the weakening of the Comision
The control of the public function is a disturbing task, but necessary in each democracy. Many governments that have disagreed with decisions of entities of control have found two ways of eliminating said control. One way is opposing publicly the decisions or even altering the competences of the entity issuing them. Another way is taking over the entity, guaranteeing that those integrating it decide in favor of its interests, or that they are so incompetent that the entity or tribunal loses any relevance.
Read MoreCongress: memory pills
The pest of oblivion in congress is increasingly critical. Now it forgets that is approved less than a year, a law about a topic and it is going through Congress once again. And to top it all, it legislates with a different and contradictory content.
Read MoreParking the mining locomotive
Given that the mining locomotive was left without the rules that allowed setting up its rails, there is no other alternative than to “put the house in order,” as the Minister of Environment told this daily. This means extending the moratorium of mining title deeds that the Government pertinently declared some months ago.
Read MoreThe democratic approval of peace
The agreement about land indicates that the negotiations at Havana are advancing. This begs an important question: an eventual agreement between the Government and FARC,should be submitted to a form of endorsement or democratic approval, such as a popular consultation?
Read MoreSub-rules to access or reject access to information
In this document, Dejusitica collected the principal legal sub-rules, derived from an analysis of judicial opinions that were issued between the years 2006 to 2013 by the Constitutional Court and the Inter American Court of Human Rights. Dejusticia restricted its analysis to opinions related to access to information, the restriction of information due to public interest, particularly when this restriction is based on rationales such as security and the functioning of justice.
The applied methodology involves a critical follow-up of the judicial task, selecting the sub-rule or normative principle that served as the core for each jurisprudential decision and, at the same time, constitutes a linking norm for another similar actual situation. Additionally, the methodology includes opinions that do not necessarily include the ratio decidendi or a unique reason that explains the decision of the case, if the cases present reasonable parameters to follow, that will be useful for the solution of similar future cases.
Read MoreThe silence of the Pacific Aliance
The Pacific Aliance will be the main commercial bloc in America.
Read MoreProcuring the revocation
Counteracting the Law and common sense, the Ombudsman office pretends that the mayors that are threatened from revocation do not stand up for their government nor oppose to those who pretend to shorten their period.
Read MoreA visa for another country
I read in El Tiempo that the Colombian passport “opens increasingly more doors”, meanwhile I gather a bunch of documents required by European countries to grant us a visa. This is the third Schengen visa that I apply for in six months, because each one is useful for the short period of a trip.
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