Colombia’s political parties reacted Wednesday to ex-President Alvaro Uribe’s claim that prosecutions against members of his administration could result in “false positives.”
Earlier this morning Uribe likened the corruption and wiretapping investigations against his administration to false positives, a practice of the Colombian military that involves killing innocent civilians and reporting them as guerrillas to inflate their kill count. The metaphor implies that Uribe’s ministers are innocent and that the Santos administration investigations leveled against them are conducted in bad faith.
Members of Colombia’s opposition party, the Polo Alternativo Democratico criticized Uribe for his comment and suggested that Uribe was attempting to erase the scandal of actual false positives that occurred during his administration.
The Liberal Party contradicted Uribe’s claims and expressed its disappointment that he had chosen to express himself in confrontational terms.
“There are numerous important acts of corruption that prosecutors have investigated,” said Liberal Party spokesman Rafael Pardo. “There are acts of corruption that occurred during the previous government.”
Liberal Senator Juan Fernando Cristo said that Uribe’s comments only showed that he was not pleased with what the Prosecutor General’s Office was doing and noted that “it’s too bad that the ex-president does not go with the national purpose.”
Conservative Senator Jorge Hernando Pedraza said that Uribe’s remarks were valid, but that Colombia’s justice system had been working effectively on corruption problems for some time and that the current investigations were part of that process.
Members of the Partido de la U. called for unity between Santos and Uribe. Senator Roy Barreras said that “it is up to the [Partido de la U.] to bring these two national leaders together.”
Senator Dilian Francisca Toro expressed the need for the two men to sit down to talk about corruption.