Page 254 - El État de los derechos humanos en las relaciones familiares
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ÉTAT DE LOS DERECHOS HUMANOS EN LAS RELACIONES FAMILIARES
As a result of so many tragic events in which the armed forces have been involved, with all
reason an issue arises insistently from the Secretary of Defense. It is right: they do not have
the legal basis for their performance in public security tasks.
Legislation without resolving before the conceptual ambiguity in which the armed forces
operate can be nationally dangerous, as it is not known with certainty what type of troops the
country demands or what the scope of its mission in the area of internal security would be.
The risk is to make his current status of substitute police more rigid and irrevocable. There
would be no step back; the police function as civil liability would have been extinguished.
The governors would applaud. Making laws without knowing where they lead us in the end
would be a dangerous step. Ambiguity about the armed forces must be eradicated. In the past
that indeterminacy has been comfortable for presidents. They have used them in everything
that the civil power is impotent or insufficient: civil protection activities, persecute guerrillas,
repress social violence, confront the narco and now submit to the general criminality that
drowns us. The costs to them have been enormous and will continue to grow.
[...] It is important to clarify in the law what the country needs its armed forces for. It must be
specified in the Constitution, an essential document where they appear indeterminantly.
They are only mentioned; they lack constitutional personality. It is said in it who appoints its
commanders, who has it for internal security (Article 89); at one extreme, what they can not
do (Article 129); what jurisdiction governs in their barracks (article 132); who declares war or
who raises them (article 73). For more, there are three armed forces and the Constitution
does not recognize it. To order them to act, a jurisprudence of the Supreme Court is used as
a crutch.
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