It was members of Congress who voted No to a no-confidence motion against Karen Abudinen

This Friday in the House of Representatives the vote of the censure motion was made against the former Minister of ICT, Karen Abudinen and, although there was a majority for the yes, the quorum was not reached. since some members of Congress did not vote, so the initiative did not flourish. In total, there were 30 votes in favor of keeping Abudinen in power.

The party supporting the majority minister was the Democratic Center. The representatives who supported him were Speaker of the House of Representatives, Jennifer Arias (Meta); Enrique Cabrales, Edward Rodríguez, José Jaime Uscategui and Juan Daza (Bogotá); Rubén Molano and Hernán Garzón (Cundinamarca); Esteban Quintero, Juan Espinal, John Bermúdez and Óscar Pérez (Antioquia); Christian Garcés and Milton Angulo (Valle); Héctor Ortiz (Boyacá); Gabriel Vallejo (Risaralda); Gustavo Londoño (Vichada); Henry Cuellar (Huila); José Carreño (Arauca); Luis Gómez (Caldas) and Juan David Vélez (Colombians abroad).

By a radical change César Lorduy and Modesto Aguilera (Atlántico), Mauricio Parodi (Antioquia), David Pulido (Guaviare), Héctor Vergara (Sucre) and Karen Cure (Bolívar) were present. For its part, to the conservative party Nicolás Echeverry (Antioquia) and Wadith Manzur (Córdoba) voted no. In end of the Special Constituency of the Afro, Raizal and Palenqueras Communities, Hernán Banguero supported the former minister.

In the U party, only Alfredo Deluque (La Guajira) voted No to the censure motion, while the rest of the judiciary felt that since Abudinen had already resigned, there was no need to vote. A total of 65 members of Congress remained without a vote, taking into account that there were more than 150 qualified to do so.

Representative María José Pizarro announced legal actions for what happened:“96 members of Congress were on the platform, and I ask you, Mr. Secretary, to certify during the voting period which members of Congress were on the platform and did not vote. It’s a parody of the Colombians “, said Representative Katherine Miranda.

For his part, the deputy León Fredy Muñoz recalled that Law 5 in its article 123 number four, specifies that: “The number of votes, in all votes, must be equal to the number of members of Congress present in the respective society at the time of the vote, with the right to vote. If the result does not match, the election is annulled by the President and its repetition is ordered ”.

Faced with this questioning, the secretary of the House assured that this is a standard that was used in the vote as the elections of public officials, but that it did not apply to the motion. censorship, without explaining in more detail why.

Abudinen’s resignation

In the afternoon of September 9, the Minister of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Karen Abudinen, officially presented his irrevocable resignation letter to President Iván Duque. He assured that he had never hesitated to resign, but that he wanted to have a few weeks to meet the country with the aim of connecting seven thousand schools and terminating the contract with the Unión Temporal Centros Poblados.

“I respectfully submit to you my irrevocable resignation from the post of Minister of Information and Communications Technologies. Today, on leaving his government, I pay tribute to his qualities as a statesman and leader. I recognize in you deep democratic values, an admirable intelligence in your decisions, and I publicly underline in my resignation your values ​​as a human being and as a leader “, he stressed.

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