Colombia’s main trade union Monday called for a march to protest the referendum Colombian President Alvaro Uribe seeks to rerun of the 2006 election.
The union demands the government to wait for the Constitutional Court’s ruling about the possible illegality of that election.
Colombia’s Supreme Court had asked the Constitutional Court to investigate the legality of the presidential election after the conviction of Yidis Medina, a former congresswoman who had admitted being bribed to allow to re-election of the popular president. Without Medina’s decisive vote, Uribe wouldn’t have been able to be re-elected.
“The vote of Yidis Medina proved decisive for the success of the constitutional reform, or to put it in another way, without her vote in favor on June 4, 2004, the legislative act would’ve become history, because it wouldn’t have been passed,” the Supreme Court said Friday.
Uribe reacted furiously and has been pushing the referendum to let the Colombian people decide whether the election should be held again, instead of awaiting the result of the investigation.
The Central Workers Unit (CUT), Colombia’s main trade union called for a march on July 3 to protest the government’s initiative. Fabio Arias, vice-President of the union, says the government “does not want to accept” the Supreme Court decision and simply is trying to force a second re-election of Uribe.
The labor leader says the march is to “express support to the Supreme Court” for “safeguarding the democracy and the institutions of this country” and accuses Uribe of wanting to erase decisions taken.
“President Uribe can not go on with this coup. This referendum is about not accepting the decision of one of the branches of government, in this case the Judicial branch, and to overrule them to prepare a second re-election,” Arias added.
The Government clarified on Sunday that the re-election only seeks to ask the people’s permission to repeat the 2006 election, “not allowing to delegitimize” Uribe’s current mandate which lasts until 2010.
The CUT’s march, to be held in Bogota, will start at the capital’s Plaza de Toros and end in front of the building of the Supreme Court.