Colombia govt will consider reinstating Patriotic Union party .
Colombia govt will consider reinstating Patriotic Union party .
Monday, 01 April 2013 08:54 Benjy Hansen-Bundy
The Commission of Peace will discuss the possibility of reintegrating the Patriotic Union (UP), which suffered a state-sponsored genocide in the late 1980s and early 1990s, into Colombian politics by returning the defunct party's legal status.
The UP has endured political "exile" since 2002 after the government took away their legal status to function as a political party.
"If there is a restitution of legal status, it is possible that other posts of public office that were lost in the genocide (could be reinstated)," Ivan Cepeda, whose father, Senator Manuel Cepeda, was murdered while in office in 1994, told Colombia Reports.
Nelda Forero, a UP spokesperson, sent a letter in mid-March to the negotiators at the peace talks between the government and the FARC in Havana, Cuba, requesting legal recognition for the party so that they might participate in the 2014 elections. Now the Commission of Peace, a body within Congress, is poised to meet separately with the High Commissioner of Peace, Sergio Jaramillo Caro, and the remaining members of the UP to discuss the party's legal status.
"For us the legal status is only one element of an integral reparation for the genocide of our members committed by the state," Omer Calderon, president of the UP, told Colombia Reports. "Today the Patriotic Union as a party is outlawed from the national stage of politics, refusing its members all fundamental rights to political participation."
More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/peace-talks/28760-colombia-govt-will-consider-reinstating-patriotic-union-party.html
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