On Monday morning, Vice President Francia Márquez appeared before the Supreme Court of Justice for a defamation case, the latest in a long history of lawsuits she has filed against those who slander her. During the 2022 election campaign, before winning the elections, the then candidate sued several public figures who insulted her with racist comments or called her a guerrilla. Justice then ruled in favor in almost all cases. Upon coming to power, she understood that she had to, according to the legislation, tolerate some blows in opinion, due to the position she held. There she stopped the demands of her, even though she received racist comments for riding in a helicopter or taking a diplomatic trip to Africa. But late last month, she and her lawyer believed that one legislator crossed the line: Senator Jota Pe Hernández.
The new defamation case began on May 27, when the Santander congressman told the magazine Week that the vice president could – the conditional is important in this story – be involved in the notorious corruption scandal of the Government of Gustavo Petro: that of the Risk and Disaster Management Unit (UNGRD), from which two protagonists have indicated that millions came out of pesos to bribe congressmen. “Either it is Verónica Alcocer or it is Francia Márquez,” said the senator, when asked who Olmedo López was referring to, the former director of the UNGRD who seeks to collaborate with justice in the case, pointing out that a very close ‘concláve’ the president organized the corrupt plan.
“Slanderous information is emerging that seeks to implicate me with lies in the events that occurred with UNGRD,” the vice president immediately told the senator. “I demand that you immediately retract your malicious insinuations,” she added, and noted that her legal team would sue him for slander if he did not take back his words. Senator Hernández did not do so, and the vice president sued him.
“She told me something like: ‘I prefer to leave before my dignity is mistreated, before they invent this type of things,’ Francia Márquez’s lawyer, Carlos Hernán Escobar, tells EL PAÍS. “I agree that a line was crossed here, because the person who is making the insulting accusation is not just anyone, but someone with a tremendous audience, with public dignity due to his position as senator of the Republic, and he leaves a message in a magazine that she is corrupt. She has said that we must make this demand to teach society that we have to respect the difference, we can dispute but with rigor, with respect,” he adds.
The case reached the Supreme Court because this is the institution that judges congressmen. Before moving forward in the process, the court summoned the two politicians for conciliation. There was no agreement. “There is not going to be any type of conciliation here,” said the senator before entering the Court, alleging that his statement simply reflects the political control that he exerts. This, despite the fact that he admits that he does not have “any evidence at this time with which he can point the finger at the vice president.” He left it in the air that it was an unfounded assumption, a political control without evidence. Márquez responded: “he has no evidence because it is false that I have anything to do with acts of corruption.” The case will remain open, and the Supreme Court has an enormous challenge: to define whether in this case the injury to Francia Márquez’s good name will prevail, or the tolerance that a public servant must have in the face of the unfounded speculations of a senator.
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Jota Pe Hernández is a influencer A controversial congressman who first entered the legislature in 2022. Despite being from the Alianza Verde party, which was part of the government coalition, the rookie congressman has been closer to the opposition. And, above all, he has given a lot to talk about. He has been accused of harassing a Caracol Radio journalist; of being disrespectful to his fellow legislators (such as former congresswoman Piedad Córdoba when she died); or of being misogynistic against the ruling party senator María José Pizarro. In few cases has he retracted his statement. One exception was in 2022, when he apologized for saying that when Gustavo Petro dies the country “will rest from so much populism and discord,” after describing the president as a man with a “murderous” and “diabolical” soul.
It had been a long time since the vice president had filed a lawsuit for libel or slander, something she did do during the presidential campaign, when she received thousands of racist comments daily. As her lawyer says, “an important phrase for her, from the campaign, is: ‘Until dignity becomes custom.’ She wanted to respect her dignity, her moral heritage, and she sought me out to help her in these legal cases. We did not open cases against everyone, but against figures who had a considerable audience, figures whose opinion is supported by many.”
The first case was resolved in May 2022, just before winning the elections, when Gabriel Vallejo, now national director of the Uribista Democratic Center party, apologized for suggesting that the vice president was linked to a guerrilla. “After having reached a conciliatory agreement, I want to express that I cannot affirm that Francia Márquez has links with the ELN or with any terrorist group outside the law,” the former congressman also explained on social networks.
In August of the same year, the singer Marbelle had to make a similar retraction, but due to racist comments. “In accordance with the conciliation carried out in the Prosecutor’s Office with the Vice President, I present a public apology to Francia Márquez for having expressed my opinion inappropriately, caricaturing her and ridiculing her image, considering this as racism,” she said in X.
The same month, House Representative Miguel Polo Polo made a public apology after another legal process. “I recant that Ms. Francia Márquez is a fraudster or a thief since she has not been the subject of any judicial reproach, also that she is the owner of gold mines in Cauca, or that she is exploiting said region, nor that the criminal group ELN has supported his candidacy for vice presidency,” he wrote in a public letter.
There was a more controversial case, already as vice president, against a woman named Fabiola Rubiano. The latter did not have a public position and, in a protest against Petro, she insulted Márquez in front of the television cameras using racist phrases. The vice president did not sue Rubiano, but the Prosecutor’s Office prosecuted her. Not because of slander or defamation, but because of discrimination and racism. The vice president, however, made it clear at one point that it would not seem right to her to conciliate in that case. “Conciliating and making her retract her opinion does not prevent the rest of society from continuing to engage in criminal behavior such as racial hatred,” the vice president said then. Rubiano also lost the process. “People think she went to jail, but that’s not true. She was sentenced to one year in prison, and the system does not imprison people when there are sentences of less than four years,” explains lawyer Escobar.
There are many politicians who are accused of corruption every day, without evidence, and if the authorities do not investigate the accusations, these statements remain forever sailing in the ocean of the web. Francia Márquez, with her dignity as her flag, and her lawsuit against Senator Hernández, has made it clear that she wants to put some brakes on that way of handling public debate.
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