LatinNews Daily Report - 10 August 2012

POLITICS | Communists expelled from PDA. On 9 August the national executive committee of the Polo Democrático Alternativo (PDA), the main left-wing political grouping in Colombia, expelled the Partido Comunista (PCC) from the coalition. The PDA expelled the PCC on the grounds of “double militancy” following the PCC’s participation in the Marcha Patriótica last April, in contravention of the decision adopted by the coalition as a whole. With the ejection of the PCC, the PDA loses another two members from its bloc in congress: Gloria Inés Ramírez in the senate and Hernando Hernández Tapasco in the chamber of representatives. (The PDA had already lost three members – Camilo Romero, Luis Carlos Avellaneda and Jorge Guevara – who have joined the Movimiento Progresista founded by the also PDA-dissident mayor of Bogotá, Gustavo Petro.)