The Supreme Court of Justice did not choose the new attorney general of Colombia this Thursday, but gave a clear signal that it seeks to do so soon. In its biweekly session, it carried out several rounds of voting to determine who will lead the entity for the next four years. None of the three candidates obtained the 16 votes necessary to achieve investiture – the court is made up of 23 judges – and the final announcement will have to wait. The process thus completes five weeks since voting began, at the end of January. However, the Court confirmed the convening of an extraordinary session of its Plenary Chamber, on March 12, to dedicate itself solely to the vote.
The clock struck noon in the Palace of Justice. The magistrates met for more than three hours and there was no news about the progress of the election. The last thing that was known was that, in the last vote in February, Amelia Pérez managed to garner 13 supports and was very close to becoming head of the Prosecutor's Office, surpassing her rivals, Ángela María Buitrago and Luz Adriana Camargo. But within a few days a pall of doubt arose over Pérez's apparent imminent triumph. Different media outlets revealed publications in X of her by Gregorio Oviedo, her husband, in which she attested to her left-wing militancy and referred to journalists with offensive expressions. The media noise was considerable, but it was impossible to know how much it could affect the candidate's image.
Gerson Chaverra, the president of the Court, left the Plenary Chamber to go to the Court's press office and attend to the journalists who were following the vote. There he stated that there is still no winner, despite several rounds of voting, but that the outcome is approaching. “There were quite important majorities that show us that we are close or close to reaching consensus and that necessary majority,” he assured. Without giving numbers or names, Chaverra reported the decision to schedule a session outside the usual schedule. And he suggested that it is likely that that day, in which they focused “exclusively” on the election of the new prosecutor, there would be white smoke.
The Attorney General's Office is currently under the interim command of Martha Mancera, who was the deputy prosecutor during Francisco Barbosa's four-year term. She has been in the position for a little less than a month, which she arrived on February 13, after her former boss ended her term. For the president and a good part of the left, Mancera is the continuation of Barbosa, with whom they publicly clashed in multiple episodes. The former prosecutor, close to the Uribista right and best university friend of former President Iván Duque, openly opposed many of President Petro's policies and accused him of behaving like “a dictator.” The first president was not conciliatory either. He accused the then attorney general of trying to remove him from the head of state through “an institutional break.”
The constant clashes framed Petro's decision to send early, in August, the shortlist from which the Supreme Court justices must choose Barbosa's replacement. At the end of September she changed a name, but maintained an innovation: never before had the list to head the Prosecutor's Office been made up only of women. Few in the public opinion clearly identified Pérez, Buitrago and Camargo, but among criminal lawyers and prosecutors they enjoy a good reputation for their decades of experience in the sector. The resumes of the three have been, since then, in the offices of the Court's magistrates, with whom they have met on several occasions and shared the plans they have for the institution.
The president would have preferred that Barbosa have a replacement as soon as he completed his four years and thus prevent Mancera from occupying his chair, even though it was only temporarily. The lack of agreement between the magistrates frustrated those plans. But now, as hinted by the president of the Court, Gerson Chaverra, the end is in sight.
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