The president of Colombia’s Constitutional Court announced Wednesday that the court will hold extra sessions to accelerate its analysis of the referendum on whether President Alvaro Uribe can stand for a third term.
Magistrate Mauricio Gonzalez said that until the court will not rule on the referendum until it fully understands the initiative.
“We [the magistrates] don’t feel pressured and are not in straitjackets,” he said.
The court will convene this Friday and then Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday of next week in order to analyse the referendum more quickly.
Humberto Sierra, the magistrate appointed by the court to study the referendum’s constitutionality, stated earlier in February that the process leading up to the referendum had “extremely serious” errors which render it unconstitutional. Sierra proposed the referendum be scrapped.
Uribe’s re-election bid depends on the whether the court approves the referendum on changing the constitution to allow him to run for a third term as president.
With national elections scheduled for May, time is running out for Uribe’s bid for a third term.
Recent polls indicate that the referendum has lost popular support.