They participated in the event senior government officials and the 16 accredited former paramilitary leaders as peace managers, among them Salvatore Mancuso, Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, known as ‘Jorge 40’, Diego Fernando Murillo and Carlos Mario Jiménez ‘Macaco’, among others.
The technical table is exceptional, temporary and does not grant any judicial benefits to those who participate in it.
According to the standard, each manager must sign an individual work plan before the Ministry of the Interior, in coordination with DAPRE and the Office of the Commissioner for Peace.
The process must be translated into a record of concrete commitments, with specific victim reparation activities, verification indicators and defined responsible parties. In addition, peace managers will have to attend judicial proceedings, actively participate in the Technical Committee, comply with the commitments made and present periodic reports on their progress. The resolution is explicit: Repeated or unjustified absence may result in the President of the Republic immediately cancel the designation.
What the Government is looking for with this technical table is different from any previous process. It is not about opening a dialogue with the exparas, as happened in the Santa Fe de Ralito Agreement in 2003, nor to design a new legal benefits scheme. The objective is more limited and more institutional: to make a comprehensive assessment of what Law 975 of 2005, known as Justice and Peace, left behind, and to prepare a definitive closure of that chapter.
At the end of the meeting the Minister of the Interior, Armando Benedetti, who will lead this process, proposed what he considers the first concrete task of the table: to seek legal alternatives so that the peace managers who are still detained can leave prison or at least improve their conditions of confinement.
“Today we can begin the first task: for some of the people who are detained here, how we can seek their release and how they can be on the outside. That is the first point that must be legally sought through the team on how it can be done as peace managers. (…) The mission site is improved or it can also be outside. “I think that is important for the process,” he stated.
The second line of work proposed in the session was the construction of a schedule for peace managers to visit the territories hardest hit by paramilitarism.
According to Benedetti, that will be another immediate priority. “It is when and what days we are going to go to the territory and why. That is another important task. It has to do with telling the truth why. (…) It is possible to go parallel, restoring the fabric broken by the conflict and at the same time telling the truth that runs parallel to the official truth. It doesn’t necessarily have to go hand in hand or just one hand to the other. And with that we would move forward to create a report and then create the judicial conditions and begin to wait for the closure of that process.”
Finally, Benedetti stressed that the Government’s commitment to this Technical Table is to move forward quickly, seriously and with visible results. “With this I show you that this is serious, that it is serious, that it is an immediate benefit for you, that you think about how to start doing the things that have to be said and we can continue, adapt and develop in record time this situation that I know has taken a long time. We have to start looking for what the legal architecture is”, he concluded.
The meeting closed with the definition of a new meeting next Monday to begin to specify work schedules and security routes in the territories. What became clear is that the Technical Table, initially conceived as a space to balance the Justice and Peace Law, is also emerging as a scenario for sensitive discussions about the legal situation of the former paras and the way in which they will contribute truth and memory from the regions.
“The truth is going to hurt Colombia and the political class”: Benedetti
At a press conference, Minister Benedetti opened the session with a political warning. “Let’s see, we have met with the sixteen peace managers appointed to a resolution by the president, and those peace managers have committed to telling the truth. A truth that I am sure will astonish Colombia, and above all the true political class that was with them, which was also complicit in several deaths and massacres that occurred at the time. Several of its political actors are candidates today, We’ll see what happens to all of that, whether it ends up being true or based on what needs to be done.”he stated.
At the meeting he was accompanied by the director of the Administrative Department of the Presidency (Dapre), Angie Rodríguez, who said that the entities scheduled to be at that table are being advised so as not to exceed their functions: “We understand that we are the executive branch and not the judicial branch. So, we are opening all legal analyzes so that this meeting is held as established by the Constitution and the law, so as not to exceed our functions.”
And he added: “I want to point out that this is a preparatory meeting, it is not official, okay? PBecause when we make the official installation among more State actors, not from the Government alone, because precisely we understand the dimension of what this closure of this process means.”
The political background of Benedetti’s words is evident: the Petro Government’s commitment is that the country knows firsthand the complicities of paramilitarism with sectors of national politics, even with actors who are still active today in electoral life. For the minister, the truth about the former paramilitary leaders is not only necessary to close an unfinished process, but also to highlight historical responsibilities that society has not yet finished facing.
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