“Doctor Uribe uses the people as a dictator would use the army or police. He is inaugurating a populist dictatorship,” Polo president Carlos Gaviria told Colombian newspaper El Tiempo.Gaviria told the newspaper a popular vote can not undomade mistakes and can not authorize the president to ignore the constitution.Polo Democrático congressman Gustavo Petro, one of Uribe’s fiercest critics and the one who uncovered the ‘parapolitics’ scandal, says the Uribe administration is constructing a tyranny.Petro states the Supreme Court doesn’t question Uribe’s victory in the 2006 elections, but to investigate whether “the modification of the constitution was part of a crime, which is called diversion of power”.”This misuse of power can be called the construction of tyranny. Generally tyrants use popular votes to re-legitimize their actions, something the President is trying to do with the referendum, but that doesn’t cover or hide what happened before, that the re-election was part of a crime,” the congressman adds.The Liberal Party, also in the opposition, are contemplating boycotting Congress during the sessions needed to prepare the referendum.Colombia’s new Interior and Justice Minister, Fabio Valencia Cosio, defended the President’s reaction to the Supreme Court ruling, saying the court ruled “prematurely”.”Look at the severity of that judgment. First, they are assuming what Mrs Yidis testified is proven, which in our opinion is not true. It’s proven to her, because she incriminated herself, but the Court has not yet reviewed the other accused parties,” the Minister told W Radio.
