🗞️ With the presidential inauguration only a few days away, the entire Cabinet of the incoming government is on a ‘spiritual retreat’ in the city of Barranquilla. President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella announced on the first day that, “At this spiritual retreat, I have reaffirmed a conviction: to build a great nation, we must place God at the centre of every decision.”
Legally, Colombia is a secular state and the 1991 Constitution separated Church and State; some state functionaries have expressed discomfort with the religious discourse of the incoming government. Current President Gustavo Petro, meanwhile — from Cuba, where he is making his final state visit as President — posted on X saying ‘false are the Christians who carry hate in their hearts.’
The inauguration ceremony itself is now to be held in the city of Cali on August 7th, though not in a military or police base as the president-elect had hoped, instead in the USC Arena — the city’s university amphitheatre.
The current government party, Pacto Histórico, has announced that none of its members will attend the ceremony and has called for peaceful demonstrations on that day in cities including Cali and Barranquilla.
🗞️ In advance of the arrival of the new government, former members of the FARC guerrilla group have called on president-elect Abelardo de la Espriella to protect the 2016 Peace Deal under which they disarmed.
Facing a presidential term under a leader who has already announced drastic cuts to the framework designed to implement the agreement, a group of one hundred former combatants has presented an agenda to the incoming government.
Proposals include a ‘national pact’ that guarantees continuity for at least the first 100 days of De la Espriella’s presidential term, as well as security guarantees for the signatories and a permanent mechanism for dialogue. The group will also be seeking protection for the Accords from the Constitutional Court.
De la Espriella has promised huge cuts to state spending, naming several institutions created to implement the terms of the 2016 Peace Accords with the FARC. These include the High Commissioner for Peace, the Implementation Unit, the Office for National Reconciliation, and the Office for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law.
The transitional court created by the Peace Agreement, known as the JEP, has also expressed concern at planned funding cuts, and the court’s president, Alejandro Ramelli, said this week that De la Espriella has yet to respond to the JEP’s invitation to open a dialogue.
🗞️ And the investigation into the femicide of María Camila Potosí continues. The 21-year-old was murdered last month in Cali while eight months pregnant, her body showing signs of torture and missing the foetus which she was carrying.
Five people were arrested this week in relation to the murder and are being kept in preventative detention: all five deny the charges — aggravated femicide, forced disappearance, and tampering with evidence.
According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the five suspects — one woman and four men — had kidnapped Potosí, taking her to a property on the outskirts of Cali, where she was attacked with a knife, killing her and removing the baby. The body of a baby girl was found in the area this week, confirmed by forensics to be Potosí’s child.
Though the motive for the murder remains unconfirmed, one police theory is that the detained woman planned to steal Potosí’s baby, passing the child off as her own to a partner whom she had convinced she was pregnant. A former partner posted on social media this week saying that she had faked multiple pregnancies during their relationship.
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