Has Petro’s cavalry arrived? Human Rights Commission to look at Bogota’s Mayor

[Judi Lynn]

Has Petro’s cavalry arrived? Human Rights Commission to look at Bogota’s Mayor
posted by Daniel E Freeman
Jan 28, 2014

Has Petro’s cavalry arrived? Human Rights Commission to look at Bogota’s Mayor

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) has finally stepped into a two-month long dispute over whether Bogota Mayor Gustavo Petro should lose his job over a 2012 trash-collection scandal. The CIDH sent Petro a letter asking the mayor to state his case. The letter asked seven questions of the former guerrilla-turned politician about the current state of the dispute, the time frame of the ongoing dismissal process, President Juan Manuel Santos’ role, and a potential constitutional court ruling.

Specific questions included, “What is the current state of the decision handed down by the Inspector General and, effectively, could the said decision be suspended? What would be the timeline that the executive would have to carry out the decision of the Inspector General for there to still exist a revocation by the High Court of the State?”
The letter was signed by Emilio Alvarez-Icaza, General Secretary of the CIDH.

The now real possibility of an intervention by the CIDH might provide the political pressure and the international weight to keep the mayor in office and strike fear into the heart of the nation’s Inspector General, who would have to answer for his actions if found to have violated human rights.

This news comes at long last for Petro and his supporters, who have been hoping that an international human rights organization would step in to assert that Inspector General Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez had crossed a line when in December 2013 he ordered for the mayor to be removed from his position and banned from holding political office for 15 years.

More:
http://colombiareports.co/petros-cavalry-arrived-human-rights-commission-look-bogotas-mayor/