Colombia’s Constitutional Court Tuesday rejected pressure concerning
the ruling on the referendum to allow a re-election of President Alvaro
Uribe.
According to the court’s president Nilson Pinilla,the court will rule “justly” and any attempt to influence the decions or decion-making of the court is “a waste of time.”
The Court was criticized by former President Andres Pastrana last week, who had said a positive outcome of the ruling was “in the pocket”, because the judge with the crucial vote had recently been installed by the Presidency.
“That the magistrates are in the pocket is to be seen,” Pinilla told RCN Radio.
Partido de la U leader Luis Carlos Restrepo, the referendum’s fiercest promotor, had complained the court would need three months to reach a verdict.
“Those who are trying to pressure the Constitutional Court are completely wasting their time,” the court president responded.
The remarks by Restrepo also led to criticism from former Governor of Antioquia and presidential hopeful Anibal Gaviria Correa.
“We did a very detailed study that shows that in the past seven years, the rulings of the Court about the constitutionality of legislative acts had an average of nine months and the shortest period of time it took was five and a half months,” Gaviria told Caracol Radio.
The Court has yet to begin its study on the constitutionality of the referendum. First a commission of both the House of Respresentatives and the Senate will have to approve the change of text of the referendum the Senate adopted after it already had been sunk by the House.
