La pequena ditadura de la Covid-19 en Colombia: uso y abuso de normas ordinarias y excepcionales para enfrentar la pandemia

Abstract

The use and abuse of the state of siege in Colombia was a constant during the 19th and 20th centuries. This is why the 1991 constituent was so careful in regulating states of emergency, establishing a system of demanding limits, limits and controls. The objective of this writing is to show how in Colombia extraordinary powers were used to face ordinary situations and now, paradoxically, ordinary powers are abused to face an extraordinary situation, such as the pandemic caused by the Covid-19 virus. The National Government and local governments for several months faced the greatest social and economic crisis the country has gone through with measures designed for normality such as the Police Code, which became a de facto state of exception. By means of a descriptive-analytical methodology, it was possible to demonstrate that limiting fundamental rights with police powers is a way to avoid the appropriate control of constitutionality by the National Government, and that several controls established in the Constitution and in the law were not effective during this crisis, which fractured the Constitutional State of Law and took us for several months to be under the small dictatorship of COVID-19.