Names that sound to replace Carlos Holmes Trujillo in the Ministry of Defense

Globe Live Media, Wednesday, January 27, 2021

After the death of Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo due to pneumonia generated by covid-19 that had him in the Intensive Care Unit of the Military Hospital of Bogotá since last January 19, some journalists asked President Iván Duke on the replacement in office, but he refused to talk about that issue to “respect the mourning”, however, there are already names that sound.

Days before the announcement of the arrival to the cabinet of Trujillo in 2019, names like Rafael Guarín, who serves as Presidential Advisor for National Security, Rafael Nieto Loaiza, former vice minister and who was a pre-candidate for the Democratic Center in 2018 and Jorge Enrique Bedoya, who has already held the position of Vice Minister of Defense in the Santos government, was sounding to replace Guillermo Botero, who resigned before a motion of censure removed him from office.

On this occasion, according to María Isabel Rueda in Semana, Bedoya remains a strong candidate to occupy this space, although for now he presides over the Society of Farmers of Colombia, the High Commissioner for Peace, Miguel Ceballos, also joins. Rafael Guarín also returns to the ring, who was also Vice Minister of Defense and would have the necessary knowledge to assume it.

However, everything can turn around as it happened at the time with Holmes Trujillo, who was not expected to be removed from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to assume the position in the Defense portfolio in November 2019. This would be the third change of head that this ministry faces, being the most moved of the Duque cabinet and that, for now, whoever is elected is expected to take office for a year and a half, the period that this government has left in power.

Under his leadership there was a resurgence in the numbers of murders against social leaders, counting 310 people killed for exercising their leadership and community work, according to the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz), an increase of 19 percent compared to 2019, when 250 cases were presented. However, 2020 ended as the year with the lowest homicide rate in the last 46 years: 23.79 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

The Institute of Legal Medicine presented a document in which the official figures of violent deaths during 2020 are released. Despite the fact that the year was marked by the coronavirus pandemic, a total of 21,602 violent deaths were registered and 51 by one hundred correspond to homicides.

According to the preliminary figures of the annual report, the forensic entity clarifies that, of the 11,013 murders, 865 of the victims were women. Compared to 2019, the murders presented a reduction of 7 percent, thanks to the different mandatory quarantines decreed by the different local governments since the arrival of the virus in the country.

Funeral honors

The commemorative events will be held this Wednesday, January 27 at 11:00 am at the Military School of Cadets General José María Córdova (ESMIC). His close relatives, members of the Public Force and President Iván Duque will be present in this space. The event will be broadcast on the Ministry’s social networks and the Presidency’s digital platforms.

The permanent work table of the country’s military forces indicated, through a press release, that Trujillo’s death is an “irreparable loss of a great Colombian and exemplary citizen.”