Petro, the Supreme Court and the eagerness for the election of the new attorney general

Attorney General Francisco Barbosa ends his term on February 12.

He came to office in 2020 sponsored by then-president Iván Duque—his best friend from his university years—and since 2022 he became one of the most visible faces of the opposition to the new Administration, that of Gustavo Petro.

His multiple clashes with the Government, which make him the target of love and hate across the political spectrum, have frequently placed him at the center of controversy and national debate.

His last moments in the Prosecutor's Office are no exception.

Supreme Court justices have not yet chosen his successor and it is not clear how long it will take.

Petro presented his shortlist for prosecutor in advance, on August 2 of last year.

He chose to nominate lawyers with a past in the prosecuting body: Ángela María Buitrago, Amelia Pérez and Amparo Cerón, whom he replaced five weeks later with Luz Adriana Camargo, since the initial candidate was questioned for her handling of the investigation of the Odebrecht case.

Since the change of Cerón for Camargo, a little more than four months have passed and the election is progressing slowly.

The 23 judges that make up the Supreme Court were summoned to the Plenary Chamber on January 25, after the break of the Judicial Branch.

Two votes stood out on the agenda, the one that would determine the president and vice president of the court and that of the new attorney general.

Both were carried out, but only the first came to a successful conclusion.

Different media, for days, anticipated that it was unlikely that any of the candidates would obtain the 16 votes required to obtain the investiture in the first vote, since it has never happened.

And that was what happened.

Thirteen magistrates, as reported by

Caracol Radio

, opted for the blank vote, a sign that the decision is not ready.

Amelia Pérez and Ángela María Buitrago.COURTESY/EFE

Buitrago, Pérez and Camargo had presented their plans for the Prosecutor's Office in front of the magistrates in November, an interview that sought to give the magistrates the necessary information to make a choice.

It was not enough.

Several of them, after the necessary majorities were not achieved in the Plenary Chamber, summoned them individually this Monday to hear them again.

The slow pace of the election, and uncertainty over the replacement of the outgoing prosecutor, are not unusual.

The last four attorney generals received the institution from the hands of interim prosecutors, who after being deputy prosecutors of the outgoing head, had received the position while the Court chose the replacement of the prosecutor in previous ownership.

Mario Iguarán was attorney general between August 2005 and July 2009. For his departure, the Court rejected the shortlists presented by Álvaro Uribe, who was ending his second consecutive term in the Presidency of the Republic, in the midst of the scandal of illegal interceptions carried out. by the Administrative Department of Security (DAS), of which some magistrates were victims.

The Court and the president were at odds over the magistrates' investigations of congressmen allied with Uribe and who had been elected thanks to the support of paramilitary groups, in the notorious parapolitics scandal.

The dispute resulted in Guillermo Mendoza Diago occupying the Iguarán seat until January 2011, when the new president, Juan Manuel Santos, had presented a shortlist to replace Uribe's (one of the reasons that led to the godfather and godson's termination). at the political antipodes).

The Court elected for the first time a prosecutor, Viviane Morales.

Morales did not finish her four-year term, as the Council of State annulled her election after concluding that she had been elected by two-thirds of the judges present, when there were several vacancies.

After her departure, in March 2012, she was replaced on an interim basis by Marta Lucía Zamora.

Two weeks later, the judges of the Supreme Court studied the shortlist quickly sent by Santos, and selected Eduardo Montealegre.

At the end of his four-year term, his deputy prosecutor Jorge Perdomo took charge of the direction of the institution between March and July 2016, when the Court elected Néstor Humberto Martínez.

Martínez's era as attorney general lasted less than three years: he resigned in May 2019 and was provisionally relieved by Fabio Espitia.

Seven months later, in January 2020, Francisco Barbosa became prosecutor.

The Plenary Chamber of the Supreme Court will meet again on February 8 to vote.

If none of the candidates obtains 16 votes, Barbosa will hand over the keys of the Prosecutor's Office to his deputy prosecutor, a position that Martha Mancera, his right-hand woman, has held throughout the period.

The Government and some sectors of the left reject this possibility, seeing it as a continuation of Barbosa, who has been a staunch critic of the Government.

The outgoing prosecutor has described Petro as “a dictator” and on several occasions has publicly criticized the head of state's initiatives, as happened with the Total Peace Law, which Barbosa described as “a benefit to drug trafficking.”

Lan deputy prosecutor, Martha Mancera, in June 2023.Sebastian Barros (Getty Images)

In addition, there are complaints against Mancera that accuse her of protecting corrupt officials who worked in Buenaventura, which led to an investigation by the same Prosecutor's Office.

The case involves the murder of an agent of the Technical Investigation Corps (CTI) of the Prosecutor's Office in 2021, in an investigation that, according to colleagues of the murdered man, demonstrated that the head of the CTI in the port was linked to arms trafficking and of illegal drugs.

Although the investigation against Mancera was closed, as journalist Yolanda Ruiz explains in that newspaper, this precedent means that the deputy prosecutor does not generate “in all sectors the tranquility and respect required for the position.”

But if the Supreme Court does not achieve white smoke in the next 12 days, unless Mancera resigns or Barbosa changes deputy prosecutor at the ninth hour, “the second most important position” in the country, as Barbosa himself called it, will be occupied by she.

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