The High Commissioner for the Peace of Colombia, Miguel Ceballos, reported today that on May 3 he presented his resignation to President Iván Duque, who recently added to his functions the mediation between the Government and the National Strike Committee that promotes protests against him.

“I wish to express to you that for personal reasons, following the calls of my conscience and in fulfillment of the responsibilities that my soul has chosen, I irrevocably resign from my position as High Commissioner for Peace,” read in the letter sent to Duque.

Although he alleges personal reasons, the resignation of the high commissioner occurs in the midst of the greatest crisis that this Government has had to face due to the protests that began on April 28 against the social and economic policy of the Duque administration.

Ceballos has been the voice of the Government in the conversations that for more than a week it has been holding with the National Unemployment Committee, the main convenor of the demonstrations that have been clouded by violence and vandalism, as well as in the dialogue with different political sectors , academic, religious and business.

President Duque has not confirmed whether the resignation of Ceballos, a lawyer from the Javeriana University of Bogotá, with a master’s degree in Political Philosophy from the Gregorian University of Rome, was accepted or not.

REACTIVATE NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE ELN

Among the main tasks assumed since August 2018, Ceballos was at the forefront of the Government’s attempts to approach the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) to try to reactivate the peace talks that had been suspended for two years.

This task is also halfway there, since on May 9, Ceballos announced that the Government continues to seek conditions to reactivate the dialogues, without the armed group having shown a real will for peace or progress in complying with the conditions imposed so far. by President Duque.

Upon assuming the Presidency, on August 7, 2018, Duque conditioned the continuity of the peace talks on that group stop kidnapping and release the people it holds in captivity, which the guerrillas refuse to abide by.

Ceballos launched “an indirect space of approach and exploration” with the ELN with which 28 meetings were held, 22 of them at the headquarters of the Apostolic Nunciature in Bogotá and six at the Palacio de Nariño (headquarters of the Executive), as well as four trips to Havana where the leaders of that guerrilla have remained for two years, when the talks stalled.

During the social crisis derived from the demonstrations, which initially began against a government tax reform, Finance Minister Alberto Carrasquilla and Foreign Minister Claudia Blum have also resigned, and Duque changed his Minister of Culture, Felipe Buitrago, yesterday.

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