The government could not find anyone to fill that vacancy. Tuesday was the former senator’s last day in Congress.
Roy Barreras will be the new Ambassador of Colombia to the United Kingdom. Following his departure from the Presidency of the Senate, the former senator was appointed by the government of Gustavo Petro as a diplomatic representative to that country.
Sources close to the process confirmed that Barreras would travel to London to lead the Colombian diplomatic delegation to that European country, a position for which the government had been searching for a mourner for several months.
“I am very grateful to the President for the resolution he has given me. I have said for weeks that my life in Congress is over, this Thursday the decision of the Council of State has been confirmed and I also has said that my vocation is to serve the country, wherever it may be,” Roy Barreras said upon learning of President Petro’s proposal.
He clarified that although he has not yet spoken with the head of state, he is “ready to serve the country from where it is useful and I hope to be useful where the president decides.”
Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva and President Petro offered that position to former Education Minister Alejandro Gaviria, former Finance Minister José Antonio Ocampo and even former President Juan Manuel Santos, but they all rejected the offer.
Now Barreras is waiting for that appointment to be officially notified. Usually, the President himself is in charge of announcing the reshuffle of his diplomatic representatives in the country’s embassies and consulates on his social networks.
The politician headed the Congress of the Republic until this Tuesday, his last working day in the legislature, after 17 years in that branch of power, when he entered the parliamentary corridors as a representative of the Chamber.
His replacement in the Presidency of the Senate will be Congressman of the Historic Treaty, Alexander López Maya, who will have to assume the government’s complex legislative agenda due to objections arising from health, pension and labor reforms.
However, it remains to be defined what will happen to the peacekeeping force, which obtained legal status this year and with which the former congressmen plan to dispute regional power in the October 29 elections.
