09:39 PM
The mayor of Apartadó, Héctor Rangel Palacios Rodríguezappealed to the Council of State the ruling that invalidated his election as president of that municipality after being found guilty of engaging in double militancy, for support candidates from the Independent movement in the last elections.
The appeal was announced by Palacios’ lawyer, Emilio Cardona Mendoza, who argued that in the midst of this process, alleged irregularities of form and that the implications of the decision would be excessive.
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“The Administrative Court of Antioquia gave some force to evidence that was poorly incorporated into the file, some notices or very deficient Facebook advertising, and also to an intervention that Héctor Rangel made in a public activity typical of the party’s support for him. Independent,” argued the litigant.
The mess that has that mayor with one foot outside his office became public on May 20 of this year, when the Third Orality Chamber of the Administrative Court of Antioquia issued a ruling declaring his election null and void.
In the court’s opinion, the local president would have irregularly supported candidates in the 2023 campaign who They were not part of his political movementin a fault that is considered as double militancy.
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The problem arose due to his closeness to two candidates who aspired to the Council for the Independent movement, led by the former mayor of Medellín Daniel Quintero, as well as another candidate from that same group for the Antioquia Assembly.
“It was confirmed that Mr. Héctor Rangel Palacios Rodríguez supported the candidates for the Municipal Council for Independents, José Velásquez and Oscar Sánchez. Likewise, it was determined that the defendant supported the candidate Walter Salas for the position of deputy of Antioquia. This corporation concludes that each of the elements required for the configuration of the double militancyso will declare the election null and void of Mr. Héctor Rangel Palacios Rodríguez as mayor of Apartadó,” the Court considered last May.
Although Palacios managed to come to power with the blessing of a coalition made up of the Liberal, MAIS, U, ASI and Alianza Verde parties, which was later joined by the then Independientes party (today without legal status), the Court of Antioquia noted that within the framework of this support, the current mayor did not have permission to support candidates outside his movement.
His closeness to the Quintero movement would not be a minor fact, given that Palacios was later one of the Antioquian leaders who was involved in the scandal of the National Risk Management Unit (Ungrd), after being part of a delegation that visited that entity. accompanied by the representative to the chamber for Antioquia, Alejandro Toro and the deputy Walter Salas.
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In these approaches, according to the director of the Ungrd Carlos Carrillo, the former Secretary of the Government of Medellín and former candidate for the Governor of Antioquia for Independents, Esteban Restrepo, and the former Secretary of the Government of Medellín Juan Pablo Ramírez also participated.
According to lawyer Cardona Mendoza, this appeal would seek to demonstrate before the Council of State that the Court of Antioquia had committed arbitrariness and had overlooked formal problems.
“We believe that there is an excess of force, in the sense of the way in which the Administrative Court of Antioquia ignored those previous rules that those political formations made and that meant that, when evaluating the evidence, the Court in the first instance was little careful in the way you do it,” he said.
“In addition, the process promoted by lawyer Jhon Jairo Aristizábal was incorporated into the judicial file of a challenge that had initially been formulated by another lawyer in the National Electoral Council. In that challenge, the mayor came out clean. “This evidence, which was transferred to the judicial file irregularly, was presented by lawyer Aristizábal,” he added.
Despite this decision already issued by the Court of Antioquia, the effects of the sentence remain suspended while the case is not resolved in substance, so Mayor Palacios Rodríguez will remain in his position.
