Spanish
Bogotá.- Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Tuesday called on citizens to gather on Friday in the Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá to begin collecting signatures in order to convene a National Constituent Assembly, following the acquittal of former President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010).
"I await all of Bogotá this Friday at 4 in the Plaza de Bolívar. We are going for National Sovereignty. We are going for the Constituent Power," wrote the president on X.
In another publication, in which he rejected the decision of the Superior Court of Bogotá to acquit former President Álvaro Uribe, he said that the call is "to begin the collection of signatures for the Constituent Power."
That court announced today the second instance ruling that overturned a sentence that last August made Uribe the first Colombian former president criminally convicted, to a sentence of twelve years of house arrest, after finding him guilty of the crimes of bribery in criminal proceedings and procedural fraud.
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Petro stated that the court's decision "covers up the history of paramilitary governance in Colombia" and of those who "came to power allied with drug trafficking and unleashed genocide in Colombia." "Now (the US President, Donald) Trump, allied with these politicians and with Uribe, will seek the sanction of the president who denounced in his life the alliances between the Colombian political power and the paramilitary drug trafficking in Colombia," added Petro, amid the new diplomatic crisis with the United States over the anti-drug fight. "The time for definitions has come, and it's not Trump who is defending, but the people," he concluded during a televised cabinet meeting to the country. In his speech, Petro expanded his criticism of Washington and directly linked Friday's gathering to the diplomatic tension. "I invite all citizens, in this case Bogotá, to meet in Plaza de Bolívar on Friday at 4 in the afternoon in the demonstration that I hope will be immense, for the sovereignty and dignity of Colombia, in response to the immense amount of slander that has been raised in the mouths of both the President of the United States, (Donald) Trump, and his closest friends, almost all located in the state of Florida," he said.This is not the first time Petro has proposed the convening of a National Constituent Assembly to reform the Constitution, as last June he announced that in the legislative elections of March 2026 "a ballot will be delivered to convene" that mechanism.
The initiative has been strongly rejected by various sectors, including constitutional law experts, who do not consider it necessary because, in their opinion, the Colombian Constitution offers guarantees and rights to the citizen. Petro's argument is that the current Constitution, from 1991, establishes a "social state of law", but, according to him, some political sectors and magistrates of high courts remain attached to the concept of "rule of law" of the previous Constitution of 1886.
