The warning was issued by Comptroller Felipe Cordoba in the middle of the EL TIEMPO forum on electoral guarantees.
“Atypical cases have been evidenced, such as that of two contracts that add up to more than $400 billion, which were awarded to the same contractor and were approved on the SECOP II platform on November 13, 2021, the date on which the Law of Guarantees in the territorial order began,” the Comptroller said in the forum.
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The contract referred to in the one signed between the Mayor’s Office of Floridablanca and the Floridablanca Real Estate Bank for $478,999,170,137.29, to develop an environmentally sustainable strategy for the modernization, expansion, administration, operation and maintenance of the public lighting system of Floridablanca.
This fact was heavily criticized by the former mayor of Floridablanca, Héctor Mantilla.
“When I was in front of the Floridablanca mayor’s office, I never saw the need to do what Miguel (current mayor) is doing today, threatens the financial stability of the municipality and the social interests of Floridians when there are needs that should be taken care of, such as security and roads,” says the former president.
And he adds that: “Floridablanca went into a setback and we see how for this mayor his thinking is completely distant from the needs of the citizens.”
For his part, the director of the Machinery Bank indicated that “this is an inter-administrative agreement between the municipality and the Bank, which is a municipal public entity that must carry out the processes under the law (…)”, said Julio González, director of Bank.
The director argued that there were delays in the signing due to external factors.
Felipe Córdoba – Comptroller General of the Republic
RPTV NEWS AGENCY team:
Journalist: Jair Diaz
Camera and Edition: Nicholas Fajardo
BOGOTA COLOMBIA). Tuesday, March 1, 2022 (RPTV NEWS AGENCY). The Comptroller General of the Republic, Felipe Córdoba, warned today of a concentration of contractors that has occurred at the national level on the eve and in application of the Guarantee Law.
«This is one of the problems of the law of guarantees, running too much to make contracts… Increased its contracting by 7,800%”, said Felipe Córdoba, Comptroller General of the Republic.
According to the control entity, 10 departments have the highest concentration of contracts. In this sense, since the entry into force of the Guarantee Law (November 13, 2021 and to date), 645,495 contracts have been signed for more than 52.3 billion pesos in the 32 departments of the country and Bogotá.
The Comptroller has found several cases where they rushed to make the contracts and there is one in particular where a contractor, as a legal representative through companies in which he was part or as a natural person, increased his contracting by 7,811%.
Magnifying glass on contracting with royalty resources before and after the entry into force of the Guarantee Law: Before, 952 projects corresponding to 3,562 contracts were approved.
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Geneva — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warns that rules of the international order that help protect peace and security will be weakened if Russian President Vladimir Putin is allowed to get away with his premeditated invasion of Ukraine.
In a video address to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Blinken warned the human rights and humanitarian crises affecting Ukraine will get worse if Putin succeeds in toppling the country’s democratically elected government.
“Look at Crimea, where Russia’s occupation has come with extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture, arbitrary detention, the persecution of ethnic and religious minorities, the brutal repression of dissent. … Reports of Russia’s human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law are mounting by the hour,” Blinken said.
Photo Gallery:
In Photos: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, March 1, 2022
Since Russia invaded Ukraine six days ago, Blinken notes Russian strikes against civilians and civilian infrastructures have escalated. He says schools, hospitals and residential buildings have been targeted. He says critical infrastructure providing millions of people with drinking water, with gas to prevent them from freezing, with electricity to keep the lights on has been destroyed.
“The High Commissioner said yesterday that Russia’s attacks had killed at least a hundred civilians, including children, and wounded hundreds more — and said she expects the real figures are much higher. … Russia’s violence has driven over half a million Ukrainians from the country in just a few days,” Blinken said. “Children, the elderly, people with disabilities, who are making harrowing journeys through conflict zones.”
The Kremlin insisted Tuesday that Russian troops don’t conduct any strikes against civilian infrastructure and residential areas.
The U.N. Refugee Agency is preparing for up to 4 million Ukrainians to flee for safety to neighboring countries. UNHCR officials say the situation looks set to become Europe’s largest refugee crisis this century.
Blinken says Russia’s repression does not stop at Ukraine’s borders. He says the Kremlin also is ramping up its repression within Russia. He says human rights defenders, journalists, Putin’s political opponents have long been subjected to harassment, intimidation, poisoning and imprisonment.
He says this treatment now is being meted out to Russians peacefully protesting the invasion of Ukraine. He says thousands have been detained, and anyone found to be assisting a foreign country or organization could be imprisoned for up to 20 years.
Geneva — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warns that rules of the international order that help protect peace and security will be weakened if Russian President Vladimir Putin is allowed to get away with his premeditated invasion of Ukraine.
In a video address to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Blinken warned the human rights and humanitarian crises affecting Ukraine will get worse if Putin succeeds in toppling the country’s democratically elected government.
“Look at Crimea, where Russia’s occupation has come with extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture, arbitrary detention, the persecution of ethnic and religious minorities, the brutal repression of dissent. … Reports of Russia’s human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law are mounting by the hour,” Blinken said.
Photo Gallery:
In Photos: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, March 1, 2022
Since Russia invaded Ukraine six days ago, Blinken notes Russian strikes against civilians and civilian infrastructures have escalated. He says schools, hospitals and residential buildings have been targeted. He says critical infrastructure providing millions of people with drinking water, with gas to prevent them from freezing, with electricity to keep the lights on has been destroyed.
“The High Commissioner said yesterday that Russia’s attacks had killed at least a hundred civilians, including children, and wounded hundreds more — and said she expects the real figures are much higher. … Russia’s violence has driven over half a million Ukrainians from the country in just a few days,” Blinken said. “Children, the elderly, people with disabilities, who are making harrowing journeys through conflict zones.”
The Kremlin insisted Tuesday that Russian troops don’t conduct any strikes against civilian infrastructure and residential areas.
The U.N. Refugee Agency is preparing for up to 4 million Ukrainians to flee for safety to neighboring countries. UNHCR officials say the situation looks set to become Europe’s largest refugee crisis this century.
Blinken says Russia’s repression does not stop at Ukraine’s borders. He says the Kremlin also is ramping up its repression within Russia. He says human rights defenders, journalists, Putin’s political opponents have long been subjected to harassment, intimidation, poisoning and imprisonment.
He says this treatment now is being meted out to Russians peacefully protesting the invasion of Ukraine. He says thousands have been detained, and anyone found to be assisting a foreign country or organization could be imprisoned for up to 20 years.
The Association of Bars of Colombia (Asobares) asked the Constitutional court to review how the Prohibition Law will be applied for the next elections.
David Contreras, member of the national board of directors of Asobares, said that they are working in Congress with several groups regarding the beginning of the dry law for the ordinary elections, a measure that is from six in the afternoon on Saturday, until six in the morning on Monday.
“With a view to the March elections, the first presidential round in May and a possible second round in June, it is more important that the Constitutional Court rule quickly on the revision of this Law approved in Congress, where the law is limited dry at the time of the day on election day,” said Contreras.
A weekend is everything in our activity. The operation of the establishments has a concentration on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays
The spokesman added that “said decision would greatly help multiple economic activities and their workforce, which would see an infinitely lesser impact than the damage it has caused since the 1980s.”
For her part, Adriana Plata, president of Asobares, said: “A weekend is everything in our activity. The operation of the establishments has a concentration on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays which, with 12 days of work, the costs of the whole month must be paid. Each weekend that advances has a specific destination, where the generality is that one is destined for payroll, the second for rent payments, the third for the payment of suppliers and services and the fourth, the profitability of the company and provision for taxes.”
Due to the foregoing, the representatives of the union asked the Constitutional Court that, given the situation they experienced with the pandemic and that there are several days of elections, “it would be a great boost for the procedure and decision to be carried out in the Court so that the limitation of the dry law adjusts solely and exclusively to the time and day of the electoral appointment”.
The new Science Law, which will be approved by the Council of Ministers in the coming weeks, will include the right to compensation for predoctoral and postdoctoral researchers with a valid contract, the Minister of Science and Innovation, Diana Morant, announced this Friday.
Although the draft bill already contemplated, for the first time, the right to compensation equivalent to twelve days of salary per year of service, this would only have been applied to new contracts signed after the entry into force of the regulations. .
The fashion industry has always had a relationship with some forms of social activism. But all too often the industry is also seen as one of excess and consumerism gone wild. That could change if New York’s Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act – or FSSAA – becomes law. Nina Vishneva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera – Vladimir Badikov.
A California city voted Tuesday night to require gun owners to carry liability insurance in what’s believed to be the first measure of its kind in the United States.
The San Jose City Council overwhelmingly approved the measure despite opposition from gun owners who said it would violate their Second Amendment rights and promised to sue.
The Silicon Valley city of about 1 million followed a trend of other Democratic-led cities that have sought to rein in violence through stricter rules. But while similar laws have been proposed, San Jose is the first city to pass one, according to Brady United, a national nonprofit that advocates against gun violence.
Council members, including several who had lost friends to gun violence, said it was a step toward dealing with gun violence, which Councilman Sergio Jimenez described as “a scourge on our society.”
Having liability insurance would encourage people in the 55,000 households in San Jose who legally own at least one registered gun to have gun safes, install trigger locks and take gun safety classes, Mayor Sam Liccardo said.
The liability insurance would cover losses or damages resulting from any accidental use of the firearm, including death, injury, and property damage, according to the ordinance. If a gun is stolen or lost, the owner of the firearm would be considered liable until the theft or loss is reported to authorities.
However, gun owners who don’t have insurance won’t lose their guns or face any criminal charges, the mayor said.
The council also voted to require gun owners to pay an estimated $25 fee, which would be collected by a yet-to-be-named nonprofit and doled out to community groups to be used for firearm safety education and training, suicide prevention, domestic violence, and mental health services.
The proposed ordinance is part of a broad gun control plan that Liccardo announced following the May 26 mass shooting at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority rail yard that left nine people dead, including the employee who opened fire on his colleagues and then killed himself.
At an hourslong meeting, critics argued that the fee and liability requirements violated their right to bear arms and would do nothing to stop gun crimes, including the use of untraceable build-it-yourself “ghost guns.”
“You cannot tax a constitutional right. This does nothing to reduce crime,” one speaker said.
The measure didn’t address the massive problem of illegally obtained weapons that are stolen or purchased without background checks.
Liccardo acknowledged those concerns.
“This won’t stop mass shootings and keep bad people from committing violent crime,” the mayor said, but he added that most gun deaths nationally are from suicide, accidental shootings or other causes and that many homicides stem from domestic violence.
Liccardo also said gun violence costs San Jose taxpayers $40 million a year in emergency response services.
Some speakers argued that the law would face costly and lengthy court challenges.
Before the vote, Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California, said his group would sue if the proposal took effect, calling it “totally unconstitutional in any configuration.”
However, Liccardo said some attorneys had already offered to defend the city pro bono.
Analysts increasingly fear that Beijing’s national security law, initially aimed at quelling dissent in Hong Kong, may be used to target people of any nationality or ethnicity who offend Chinese leaders.
The law took effect in June 2020 after a year of sometimes violent Hong Kong pro-democracy protests against the government. The measure prohibits acts of “separatism, subversion, terrorism, and colluding with foreign forces.”
At least 117 people have been arrested and 60 charged in the former British colony and world financial center in the 13 months since the law took effect.
Violations carry a sentence of up to life in prison.
But experts say the law’s open-ended wording, along with the Chinese government’s wider ambitions, leaves open the possibility that it will be used against anyone with known anti-China or pro-Hong Kong independence sentiments who sets foot in a Chinese territory such as Hong Kong or the former Portuguese colony of Macao.
“As long as China can execute their jurisdiction within Chinese territory, Hong Kong and Macao, people who violate (the) national security law could be extradited to China for the trial, even if just transferring at Chinese airports,” said Chen Yi-fan, assistant professor of diplomacy and international relations at Tamkang University near Taipei.
Taiwanese scholar under fire
Wu Rwei-ren, a research fellow at Taipei-based Academia Sinica, last year became the first Taiwanese person to be accused of breaking the law. A Beijing government-backed media outlet, Takungpao, called out the 60-year-old scholar over an article advocating for Hong Kong independence.
University officials could not be reached for comment.
People in Taiwan will be particularly suspected as time goes on, analysts say.
China claims Taiwan as part of its territory despite the island’s sometimes defiant self-rule of 80 years and has not ruled out using force to reunite it with the mainland.
Democratic Taiwan has an independent media scene and according to a National Chengchi University Election Study Center survey, more than half of Taiwan’s residents want to keep the status quo indefinitely or decide later on the question of unification with China.
Beijing regularly flies military planes into Taiwan’s airspace.
“Usually moves like these are meant to send a message,” said Sean Su, an independent political analyst in Taiwan. “It could be used as sort of a weapon in order to try to intimidate people in Taiwan, but I think the after effect, I think is going to be negative.”
Broad language
Wording of the law covers residents of Hong Kong as well as people who have never visited, according to New York-based advocacy group Amnesty International.
Amnesty said in July 2020 that anyone on Earth, “regardless of nationality or location, can technically be deemed to have violated this law and face arrest and prosecution if they are in a Chinese jurisdiction, even for transit.”
China says its Hong Kong policy is aimed at protecting the territory’s stability and legal system. “Anti-China forces who seek to destabilize Hong Kong must be resolutely excluded” from any positions of power in Hong Kong, said Xia Baolong, head of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office.
Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, attends the opening session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China on March 4, 2021.
Hong Kong residents abroad
Hong Kong native Joey Siu, who works in Washington, assumed she would be arrested “immediately” if she showed at the airport in the former British colony. She hasn’t been back to Hong Kong since the law took effect. Siu works for the UK-based human rights group Hong Kong Watch, organizing protests and rallies while doing international advocacy work.
“Since the law was implemented in 2020, I have felt that I am no longer safe in Hong Kong, because I figured that I was being followed by people who I don’t know if they are security guards or they are Hong Kong police officers, so I felt like my personal safety is no longer guaranteed in Hong Kong and obviously my international advocacy effort is going to lead me to being charged under the name of colluding with foreign forces,” Siu told VOA.
At least four other Hong Kong activists are now staying in the United States and Europe for the same reason, she said.
Siu says writing about dissent will also lead to arrest, although the law lays down no “solid red line” about what’s criminal. The law may extend as well to people who support the political causes of disenchanted Tibetans and Uyghurs, two Chinese ethnic minority groups that have clashed with Beijing’s objectives, she said.
Protesters from Hong Kong in Taiwan and local supporters protest the recent arrests at a news outlet (Stand News) in Hong Kong outside the Bank of China in Taipei, Taiwan, Dec. 30, 2021.
Wider reach?
China has extradition treaties with 37 countries and uses them. The government in Beijing has requested the extradition of ethnic Uyghurs in Malaysia – a request that was denied – for example, according to the Washington-based Center for Advanced China Research.
An offender of the national security law who is based in a China-sympathetic country such as Cambodia would face high odds of extradition, said Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor of politics and international studies at International Christian University in Tokyo.
Individuals who use Mandarin or Cantonese to spread their ideas counter to the Communist Party “narrative” are more likely to be targeted, Nagy said.
“Retroactively charging an (overseas-based) Hong Kong (native), or a Taiwanese scholar, or actions they may have done is very worrisome because it’s an extension of domestic law, and it’s not recognizing the various identities that exist in the Chinese, greater China sphere,” he said.
For this reason, Nagy says, foreign governments are warning their citizens to avoid visiting China, including Hong Kong. The U.S. Department of State, for example, urges U.S. citizens to “reconsider” travel to Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland because of “arbitrary enforcement of local laws.”
