Álvaro Uribe resigns from the Senate before the investigation that keeps him under house arrest

Former President and Senator Álvaro Uribe upon his arrival at the Supreme Court of Justice in Bogotá, in October 2019Luisa Gonzalez / Reuters

The former president of Colombia Álvaro Uribe Vélez (2002-2010), under house arrest for a case of witness manipulation that is advancing in the Supreme Court of Justice, has resigned this Tuesday his seat in the Senate, where he was the undisputed head of the bench of the Democratic Center, the ruling party. The resignation sparks a debate about the competence of the high court, which is in charge of trying congressmen and links it to a criminal investigation for alleged bribery and procedural fraud.

Uribe has said in a statement that the security measure with house arrest cancels his "expectations of returning to the Senate" and has reiterated that, in his opinion, eight procedural guarantees have been violated, he and his lawyer were intercepted and have been given leaks to the press, among other complaints. In addition, he argued that he is "detained for inferences, without direct evidence" in clear response to the investigation of the Supreme Court of Justice, which lasted more than two years. "I vote for a justice reform that depoliticizes it by changing the system for electing magistrates," the former president wrote in a statement.

Resignation from the Senate: pic.twitter.com/JaoRDVt9i2

The former president, who is the political mentor of President Iván Duque, also became in the 2018 legislative elections the most voted senator in the country's history, with 800,000 votes. When the Court called him to investigate in July of that year, before Duque's inauguration, he had already resigned his seat, but he retracted a few days later.

"That Uribe resigns from the Senate does not imply under any circumstances that the Supreme Court of Justice loses its competence to advance the investigation and call him to trial," reacted Senator Iván Cepeda, considered a victim in the witness tampering process. "Uribe in his capacity as senator used members of his legislative work unit to contact different prisoners in the country's prisons, paramilitaries, to testify against me," the opposition congressman valued. "The competition for these events continues to be in the Supreme Court of Justice."