Colombia’s finance minister Alberto Carrasquilla has been in office for little more than a month and is already facing a possible removal from office.
Colombia’s congress ordered the minister to appear on Tuesday to defend himself against a possible motion of no confidence for allegedly using his position for his personal benefit.
Carrasquilla has been suspected of tax evasion for years and allegedly used his position as Finance Minister between 2003 and 2007 to propose laws that reportedly ended up enriching himself at the cost of more than 100 municipalities.
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President Ivan Duque and his hard-right Democratic Center party have expressed their support for Carrasquilla, but are facing fierce criticism from the leftist opposition.
Senator Jorge Robledo of the social-democratic Democratic Pole party called the debate in order to file a motion of no confidence that could force Duque to replace the controversial minister if approved.
Not one motion of no confidence has ever been approved by Congress, but the position of Carrasquilla has been particularly weak after the corruption allegations, the suspicions of tax evasion, and his proposals to tax basic necessities and impose an income tax on the country’s lower class.
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No party but that of the president has dared to explicitly support Carrasquilla, whose controversial policy proposals have been blamed for Duque’s low approval rating.
Whether a majority of lawmakers will support Robledo is entirely uncertain; congress is fractured and neither the opposition nor the coalition have a majority in Congress.
Carrasquilla’s future in politics depends on the centrist Liberal Party (LP) and the center-right Radical Change (CR) that declared themselves independent of the government earlier this month.
While these parties have not taken any position in regards to Carrasquilla’s future, influential senators within both the LP and the CR have expressed support for doing what no Congress has ever done in the history of Colombia, removing a minister.