Tag Archives: uribe

Colombia

Santos prepares for Oct. 2 referendum on Colombia’s FARC peace deal

Leave a comment
(Adalberto Roque / AFP / Getty Images)
Cuban president Raúl Castro looked on yesterday as Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos and FARC commander Timoleón Jiménez shook hands. (Adalberto Roque / AFP / Getty Images)

As expected, after years of negotiation, Colombia finally has a peace deal with a group of Marxist guerrillas that have been waging war against the central government for over a half-century. Colombia Flag Icon

In Havana on Wednesday, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos and leftist guerrilla commander Timoleón Jiménez came to a final understanding on a peace deal that could, at long last, end the insurrection of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), following a four-year process that began in Oslo in 2012, that dominated the 2014 general election and promises to cast a long shadow on upcoming elections in 2018. A ceasefire is set to take effect next Monday.

The deal hopes to end over 50 years of violent conflict between the Colombian state (and often, right-wing paramilitary forces) and FARC, closing a chapter of brutality that stretches back to the 1948 assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a popular presidential candidate, the Bogotazo riots the followed, the ensuing decade of ’La Violencia’ and Colombia’s descent into cartel-fueled drug conflict in the 1980s and 1990s.

Next, however, the Santos government has to win a national referendum on the deal to be held on October 2.

The headlines are congratulatory now, but it’s not going to be an easy campaign to win.

In addition, the ‘Yes’ side must constitute at least 13% of all voters, adding a secondary threshold. So if turnout isn’t high enough, the referendum will not pass. Even if it does win, however, the vote alone will not necessarily secure the peace deal’s future, and it will take years (and likely millions in funding) to normalize peace in Colombia. That includes securing 7,000 rebel guerrillas who have preliminary agreed to disarm. Moreover, the deal also includes a late-breaking and controversial provision that guarantees at least 10 seats in the Colombian congress to a FARC-affiliated political movement through at least the year 2026.

The Colombian government’s position has always been that any peace agreement should be ratified by voters in a special referendum; FARC leaders instead preferred a special constituent assembly. The next five weeks across Colombia will show why they’ve been so tenacious about subjecting the peace deal to a popular vote. There’s no doubt that Santos wants to call the vote relatively quickly to prevent an even longer campaign to discredit his administration’s efforts. First, though, the Santos administration must make public the exact terms of the deal, and it must formally win an internal FARC vote. Every little detail of the deal’s terms and conditions will be potential fodder for derailing it.

As anxious, pro-European Brits might warn, not every issue should necessarily be subject to popular referendum. That’s especially true in a representative democracy, where voters elect professional politicians to make, change and enact laws. That’s especially true in cases where a minority can take away rights from a majority — whether it’s the economic rights that come with EU membership or basic marriage equality for gay men and women. Or, in Colombia’s case, securing special rights and privileges that will induce FARC’s former guerrillas to give up violent conflict in favor of everyday politics.

Moreover, since the moment Santos announced plans to negotiate with FARC, his predecessor, Álvaro Uribe, has bitterly opposed him.

As Uribe’s defense secretary, Santos seemed set to follow Uribe’s hard-line, no-compromise course against FARC. Once elected in 2010, however, Santos diverged, drawing Uribe’s ire and a challenge in the form of a new conservative political party, Centro Democrático (CD, Democratic Center), which thrived in the 2014 parliamentary elections. Uribe’s candidate, Óscar Iván Zuluaga won the first round of the presidential election in May 2014 and only lost the runoff by a narrow six point margin a month later (owing his success more for his emphasis on economic growth than for his skepticism about the peace process). The 2014 runoff vote, in which Santos barely won an absolute majority (50.95%) is evidence for the broad notion that majority of Colombians can be mobilized in support of the peace deal.

But Uribe and his allies will stop at nothing to thwart the peace deal at the ballot box. Most Colombians seem well-disposed to the Santos approach, weary to end the chapter of far-left guerrilla rebellion and far-right military reprisals. The deal contains controversial aspects, including the potential amnesty of FARC rebels, and Uribe will be certain to emphasize the most unpopular elements of the deal.

Andres Pastrana, Uribe’s Conservative predecessor as president, also tried to effect peace negotiations with the FARC, but like Uribe, he opposes the current deal, this week calling it a ‘coup d’etat against justice.’ Both Uribe and Pastrana will argue that a rejection at the ballot box will make possible renegotiation and, potentially, a tougher deal for FARC rebels. But it’s hard enough to know whether FARC guerrillas will universally accept the terms of the current deal, let alone negotiate in good faith after rejection by voters.

WIthout uribismo, the Colombian government would never have been in such a great negotiating position, it’s true. Uribe’s controversial military (and US-backed) approach essentially defeated FARC as a serious threat and challenge to the government. Though Uribe faces accusations of human rights abuses, today’s peace talks directly result from his government’s victories over FARC.

A peace deal with the FARC is the chief policy achievement of Colombia's two-term president Juan Manuel Santos. (Facebook)
A peace deal with the FARC would be the chief policy achievement of Colombia’s two-term president Juan Manuel Santos. (Facebook)

If Santos wins the referendum and signs the peace deal, it will be the most important policy achievement of his two-term presidency. But, with less than two years to go, Santos is massively unpopular as Colombians blame him for a struggling economy and a much devalued peso. Earlier this year, Santos lost the support of the largest party in his coalition, the Partido Liberal Colombiano (PLC, Colombian Liberal Party), and several figures from within the wider pro-Santos camp are already competing for the 2018 elections. Zuluaga, who may run again in 2018, will obviously campaign vigorously against the peace deal. But even Santos’s own vice president, Germán Vargas Lleras, the leader of the liberal, center-right Cambio Radical (Radical Change), and one of several leading 2018 contenders, has backed away from the peace process. Polls generally give the pro-deal camp a narrow lead, but not by much.

Other popular 2018 contenders less politically close to Santos will be in the pro-deal camp. Sergio Fajardo, a former Medellín mayor and governor of Antioquia, is likely to run as the candidate of the Partido Verde (Green Party). So might the left-wing Gustavo Petro, a former Bogotá mayor and M-19 guerrilla. Uribista allies tried to remove Gustavo Petro, a former M-19 guerrilla, as Bogotá mayor (traditionally, the second-most important elected post in Colombia) in 2013 and 2014, ostensibly over the issue of garbage removal. It took a ruling from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to reinstate Petro as mayor.

Petro’s example — the M-19 disarmed years ago and never represented the same level is that as FARC — shows just how radioactive, for both sides, the amnesty and political participation aspects of a peace deal could be. Notwithstanding Santos’s promises, a significant portion of the Colombian political elite will be incredibly wary of the possibility that former left-wing rebels could one day gain power through the political process. The 2018 elections, ultimately, will represent a second-run referendum on the peace deal. Even a vote for peace in October, therefore, doesn’t guarantee the peace process’s ultimate success.

Colombia

Santos win is very good news for Colombia’s peace accords

Leave a comment

santos wins

After a first-round scare, Juan Manuel Santos won reelection to a second four-year term as Colombia’s president Sunday, delivering a narrow defeat to Óscar Iván Zuluaga and, perhaps more significantly, Santos’s one-time mentor and now opponent, former president Álvaro Uribe.Colombia Flag Icon

Though Santos (pictured above) served as Uribe’s defense minister, and won election as president in 2010 with Uribe’s blessing, the former president broke with Santos by opening negotiations with the leftist guerrilla group, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). Uribe won support throughout the 2000s from a wide swath of Colombian voters for his aggressive stand against FARC, other guerrilla groups and drug cartels.

Zuluaga, who won the first round of the presidential election over a divided field, indicated that, if elected, he would impose incredibly harsher conditions on the FARC talks — so harsh that they would almost certainly halt the progress of that FARC and the Santos administration have made.

On Sunday, Santos narrowly defeated Zuluaga by a margin of 50.94% to 45.01%. Santos has the support of a coalition of major parties, including the Partido Liberal Colombiano (Colombian Liberal Party) and the Partido Social de Unidad Nacional (Social Party of National Unity, ‘Party of the U’) that once supported Uribe. Zuluaga was supported by Uribe’s newly formed party, Centro Democrático (Democratic Center) and significant segments of the Partido Conservador Colombiano (Colombian Conservative Party), which had backed Uribe and Santos in the past.

* * * * *

RELATED: Five reasons why Zuluaga is beating Santos in Colombia’s election

RELATED: It’s the economy (not FARC), stupid

* * * * *

Make no mistake — Santos’s reelection is good news for Colombia, good news for the entire region and good news for the United States, which has devoted significant resources to stabilizing Colombia in the past three decades. If there’s any lesson to be learned from the chaos in Iraq over the past week, it’s that insurgencies ultimately require political, not just military, solutions. Military force can subdue and repress internal dissent, but ending a domestic insurgency demands some form of political engagement.

Santos, throughout the campaign, demonstrated that he understands that in a way Uribe and Zuluaga don’t. Though Santos made his fair share of errors as a first-term president, his victory is cause for optimism that the Colombian government will ultimately reach a political settlement with FARC (even on the same day that Colombian security forces launched a successful operation against FARC on election day).

In the final days of the campaign, there was a sense that Zuluaga might, after all, back down from his hardline stance on the FARC talks, which began in late 2012 — 48 years after FARC’s creation.

But you don’t necessarily have to disavow the sometimes controversial aspects of uribismo to acknowledge that the FARC negotiations are a necessary next step. The Colombian military, first under the Uribe administration, and then under the Santos administration, was vital in bringing FARC to the negotiating table, and the current peace talks are, in many ways, the natural progression of Uribe’s successful efforts to marginalize FARC.

From the outset, the FARC talks were never a repudiation of Uribe’s presidency, but an indicator of Uribe’s success. Nonetheless, it was all too easy to imagine Colombia taking a decade-sized step backward under Zuluaga. For that reason, Santos’s reelection is worth savoring. Continue reading Santos win is very good news for Colombia’s peace accords →

Colombia

Colombia election results: Zuluaga edges out Santos in first round

Leave a comment

zuluaga

Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s president, is officially in trouble. Colombia Flag Icon

After the first round of Colombia’s residential vote today, Santos finished around 3.5% behind Óscar Iván Zuluaga, a more hardline conservative backed by former president Álvaro Uribe, whose campaign won increasing support from voters over the past two months.

Here are the results:

colombia14

As widely expected prior to today’s voting, Zuluaga and Santos will now advance to a runoff on June 15.

Santos was first elected in 2010, running with Uribe’s support and on his record as defense minister under Uribe. The former president is best known for his militarized campaign against what remained of Colombia’s drug cartels in the 2000s and its leftist guerrillas, notably the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), is now opposing Santos. Though Santos largely helped Uribe carry out his quasi-military campaign against the Marxist FARC, which has been waging an insurgency against the Colombian government since 1964, Santos has opened the most comprehensive and promise peace negotiations with FARC to date.

Santos’s narrow first-round loss may actually bolster his chances in the runoff. Despite Zuluaga’s surge over the past two months, the runoff will almost certainly become a referendum on the FARC negotiations.

Expect the Colombian left to line up behind Santos as a matter of national unity to save the peace talks, including those voters who supported López and Peñalosa in the first round (it’s very difficult to imagine Zuluaga winning over many of their supporters) and, probably, a fair number of Ramírez supporters as well. If you add up the combined support of Santos, López and Peñalosa, it’s over 49% of the first-round vote. Given a choice between continuing the FARC talks or returning to a more militarized, Uribe-style approach, it’s easy to believe that a ‘peace front’ will emerge to bolster Santos on June 15.

So on paper, Santos has the easier route to victory — but that’s only so long as Santos holds onto his first-round base. There’s a chance that Zuluaga, having weakened Santos, could pull soft voters away from Santos if he’s aggressive enough in the next three weeks.

But the last month of the campaign has been characterized by scandal and dirty politics. Hackers with connections to the Zuluaga campaign are accused of illegally obtaining confidential information related to the FARC negotiations, while Santos’s campaign manager, is accused of taking millions in exchange for intervening on behalf of drug dealers trying to avoid extradition to the United States. There’s no way to know whether new revelations might change the dynamic of the race in the next three weeks in unpredictable ways.

Moreover, Zuluaga seems to have outmaneuvered Santos with his strong stand against the FARC, making Santos seem weak in comparison. Meanwhile, Zuluaga has arguably also outmaneuvered Santos on bread-and-butter economic issues. While the economy has grown at a stead pace of between 4% and 5% in the past four years, growth has been uneven, and Zuluaga has fashioned a more populist campaign based on promises of greater social spending and higher employment.

The biggest surprise might be that Enrique Peñalosa, a moderate, anti-corruption candidate, who served as the mayor of Bogotá between 1998 and 2001, finished far behind in fifth place. At one point earlier this spring, Peñalosa had surged into second place, and several polls showed that he would even defeat Santos in a runoff. But as Zuluaga became an increasingly serious contender, Peñalosa’s support collapsed, and even top leaders within the newly formed Alianza Verde (Green Alliance) defected to indicate their support for Santos.

Marta Lucía Ramírez, the candidate of the Partido Conservador Colombiano (Colombian Conservative Party), won just over 15% of the vote, as did Clara López, the candidate of the leftist Polo Democrático Alternativo (Alternative Democratic Pole).

Uribe, who formed a new political party last year, Centro Democrático (Democratic Center), won a seat in the Colombian Senado (Senate) in congressional elections earlier in March.

Santos is backed by a trio of parties, the centrist Partido Liberal Colombiano (the Colombian Liberal Party), the Partido Social de Unidad Nacional (Social Party of National Unity, ‘Party of the U’), and Cambio Radical (Radical Change).

Belgium, Colombia, Egypt, European Union, Lithuania, Ukraine

The six world elections taking place this weekend — and why they matter

Leave a comment

kenny

I can’t remember a time when there have been so many crucial world elections taking place at such a frenetic pace.

The spring voting blitz began with a five-day period in early April that saw Afghanistan’s presidential election, Indonesia’s legislative elections, the beginning of India’s nine-phase, five-week parliamentary elections, Costa Rica’s presidential runoff and Québec’s provincial elections.

Since then, India’s finished its voting and elected a new government led by Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. Macedonia, Algeria, Iraq, Panama, South Africa, and Malawi have held elections, too, over the past seven weeks.

It all comes to a climax with five elections today — and another election that will take place over two days of voting on Monday and Tuesday.

Here’s a short look at each election — and why it matters to global policy. Continue reading The six world elections taking place this weekend — and why they matter →

Colombia

How the Peñalosa campaign fell apart in Colombia

Leave a comment

Penalosa

On paper, Enrique Peñalosa looks like the best president Colombia might never have.Colombia Flag Icon

As mayor of Bogotá between 1998 and 2001, Peñalosa introduced the widely popular TransMilenio rapid bus system, expanded a sprawling network of bicycle paths, and generally built upon the foundation on the progress established by his predecessor, Antanas Mockus. Together, Mockus and Peñalosa arguably transformed Bogotá into one of the most developed urban spaces in Latin America.

Six weeks ago, Peñalosa seemed to have the momentum in Colombia’s presidential election, building on his reputation as a moderate, non-corrupt public official. Poll after poll showed him vaulting into second place and gaining ground against the incumbent, Juan Manuel Santos. Early in April, polls started showing that he was nearing 20% support and, more incredibly, that voters preferred Peñalosa to Santos in a hypothetical runoff.

That’s all before Óscar Iván Zuluaga, the conservative candidate allied with former president Álvaro Uribe, started gaining traction. With Colombians set to vote on Sunday in what will likely be the first of two rounds of their presidential election, Zuluaga is now tied with Santos, according to polls, and either one could win the June 15 runoff.

* * * * *

RELATED: Five reasons why Zuluaga is beating Santos
in Colombia’s election

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Peñalosa has fallen back to single digits in polls. No one gives him much of a chance to advance to a runoff — in contrast to Mockus, who finished second in the 2010 presidential election as the candidate of the Partido Verde Colombiano (Colombian Green Party). In that election, Santos, running with Uribe’s support and on his record as Uribe’s defense minister, easily dispatched Mockus by a margin of 69.1% to 27.5%, given Mockus’s leftist politics.

This time around, many voters otherwise inclined to support Peñalosa have instead lined up behind Santos to block Zuluaga’s election, which would almost certainly torpedo the Santos administration’s current negotiations to bring to an end the 50-year guerrilla insurgency of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). Continue reading How the Peñalosa campaign fell apart in Colombia →

Colombia

Five reasons why Zuluaga is beating Santos in Colombia’s election

Leave a comment

zuluaga

Two months ago, Colombia’s president Juan Manuel Santos,  a former defense minister, who launched the most wide-ranging peace talks with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), looked like a lock for reelection.Colombia Flag Icon

Since late March, however, Santos has flatlined in the polls and his conservative rival, Óscar Iván Zuluaga, has nearly doubled his support — to the point where Santos and Zuluaga are now tied heading into the first round of the presidential election on May 25. Some polls show Zuluaga outpacing Santos in the runoff vote, which will take place on June 15 if, as widely predicted, no candidate wins a 50% majority this weekend.

The race has largely (though not entirely) become a referendum on the FARC peace talks, the most serious attempt by any Colombian government to seek a truce with the guerrilla movement since it began in 1964. Santos has become the ‘peace’ candidate, arguing that the negotiations are making steady progress and that voters should give him a mandate to continue the talks.

Zuluaga and his political mentor, former president Álvaro Uribe, argue that it’s wrong to offer incentives to FARC leaders, railing that they belong in prison, not discussing the possibility of winning seats in Colombia’s Congreso (Congress).

Zuluaga’s election would impose new conditions on the peace negotiations that would almost certainly bring them to an abrupt end, and he would return to the military-style campaigns designed to eradicate and eliminate FARC that were common in the Uribe era. Though Uribe presided over the widespread pacification of Colombia in the mid-2000s, Santos has argued that the FARC has been so weakened that it’s time for negotiations.

Most Colombians long ago lost patience with FARC, which has increasingly turned to drug trafficking to finance its Marxist guerrilla activities, and most Colombians also lost patience with the drug-financed right-wing paramilitary units that sprang up in the 1980s and 1990s in resistance to FARC. Voters seem willing to support Santos’s efforts to normalize relations with FARC if the talks will end the violent standoff for good.

FARC, for its part, seems to be working to bolster Santos’s political standing, declaring a unilateral ceasefire between May 20 and May 28, and working to complete the third of five issues-based agreements this week. The accord addresses controlling trade in illegal drugs. Zuluaga and Uribe argue that it’s unwise to discuss drug policy with FARC, but Santos has argued that this accord in particular could eradicate what’s left of the illegal coca trade in Colombia.

JMsantos

In an Ipsos poll conducted between March 14 and 16, Santos (pictured above) led with 24% of the vote, while Zuluaga was tied in second place in single digits, along with the candidate of the Alianza Verde (Green Alliance), Enrique Peñalosa, and the candidate of the Polo Democrático Alternativo (Alternative Democratic Pole), Clara López. With 19% of survey participants proclaiming they would cast a blank vote and with another 27% of voters undecided, however, the race was still fluid.

In an Ipsos poll conducted between May 13 and 15, Zuluaga led with 29.5%, with 28.5% for Santos, 10.1% for López, 9.7% for the candidate of the Partido Conservador Colombiano (Colombian Conservative Party), Marta Lucía Ramírez, and just 9.4% for Peñalosa, whose support was rising in late March and April. It’s been a particularly brutal fall for Peñalosa, who was the only candidate throughout the spring who seemed able to defeat Santos in a runoff.

The election campaign has turned nasty this month, with dual scandals implicating both Santos and Zuluaga — and both of them involve the nasty intersection of politics and illegal drugs in Colombian politics.

Two weeks ago, Santos’s campaign manager, J.J. Rendon, a Venezuelan political operative who’s something akin to the Karl Rove of Latin American politics, resigned after he was accused of receiving $12 million for his role in preventing the extradition of a handful of Colombian drug traffickers to the United States. Rendon didn’t deny intervening, but he denied accepting money.

But the more serious scandal broke last week, when Zuluaga and his former campaign manager, Luis Alfonso Hoyos, were shown in video footage allegedly receiving a briefing from a campaign consultant, Andres Sepulveda, on the FARC talks based on illegal surveillance. Though Sepulveda has since been arrested, Zuluaga has argued the video is a fabrication. Although the scandal could ultimately result in criminal charges for Zuluaga, it’s even more damaging as a reminder of the civil liberties abuses of the Uribe era. Nonetheless, the accusations (so far) haven’t seemed to dent Zuluaga’s growing lead.

So what’s going on? What explains Zuluaga’s meteoric rise?

Here are six reasons that explain why Zuluaga is now the slight favorite to become Colombia’s next president. Continue reading Five reasons why Zuluaga is beating Santos in Colombia’s election →

Colombia

Three reasons why Petro’s removal as Bogotá mayor could harm Santos

Leave a comment

CIMG3361

In a decision that could widely affect the May presidential election, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos has confirmed the previous decision of Colombian inspector-general Alejandro Ordóñez to remove Gustavo Petro, a leftist and former M-19 rebel leader, as Bogotá’s mayor.Colombia Flag Icon

Ordóñez, a staunchly right-wing conservative close to former president Álvaro Uribe, ordered Petro’s removal last December on the questionable basis of Petro’s actions during a garbage collection strike in December 2012. Ordóñez claimed that Petro’s threat to replace public workers with private garbage collectors amounted to abuse of office. In addition to Petro’s removal, Ordóñez also banned Petro from holding public office for 15 years.

* * * * *

RELATED: Uribe returns to Colombian political life as senator

* * * * *

Petro, who was facing an April 6 recall election in any event, appealed Ordóñez’s decision, but the Colombian Council of State refused to overturn it. Santos affirmed Petro’s removal today, naming labor minister Rafael Pardo as Bogotá’s interim mayor, despite an order from the Inter-American Human Rights Commission upholding Petro’s right to remain mayor. Accordingly, Santos’s decision could potentially endanger Colombia’s seat within the Organization of American States.

Presumably, Bogotá residents will go to the polls later this spring or summer to choose Petro’s permanent replacement.

In the meanwhile, Santos’s decision leaves him vulnerable on at least three fronts as the May 25 presidential election approaches. Santos appears increasingly likely to face a June 15 presidential runoff, against either former Bogotá mayor Enrique Peñalosa or former finance minister and Uribe ally Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, the candidate of Uribe’s newly formed politics vehicle, Centro Democrático (Democratic Center). Continue reading Three reasons why Petro’s removal as Bogotá mayor could harm Santos →

Colombia

Uribe returns to Colombian political life as senator

Leave a comment

uribe

The big headline from Sunday’s congressional elections in Colombia is the return of the powerful conservative former president, Álvaro Uribe, who won election to the Colombian Senado (Senate).Colombia Flag Icon

But the bigger story is more complicated — and the truth is that each of the two major camps in Colombian politics has something to be happy about from the weekend’s elections, which were conducted in the shadow of two important upcoming elections — a recall election involving Gustavo Petro, the leftist mayor of Bogotá on April 6 and a presidential election on May 15 (with a potential runoff to follow later in the summer).

Uribe (pictured above) has carved out a space where he now leads the main opposition to Colombia’s president Juan Manuel Santos, demonstrating his enduring popularity and his determination to play a role in Colombian governance, despite his ineligibility to run for the presidency in the future.  It will make Colombia’s congress a much livelier place, to say the least, and it will require Santos (or his successor) to work hard to maintain a working majority in the Colombian congress, and especially in the Senado.

Santos, however, should be delighted that his coalition suffered only marginal losses to Uribe’s forces.  Despite Uribe’s gains on Sunday, Santos remains the heavy frontrunner in the upcoming May 15 presidential election.  That’s in part because Uribe himself is barred from reelection, so Uribe’s new party is supporting former finance minister, Óscar Iván Zuluaga, who has far less popularity and charisma than either Uribe or Santos.

You can think of Colombia politics today as a competition between two major blocs — a centrist/center-right coalition that supports Santos and a more conservative bloc that supports Uribe.  In addition, there’s a minor bloc of leftist parties that today find themselves largely outside the mainstream of Colombian politics, with the exception of the Colombian capital, Bogotá.

Uribe formed CDlogothe Centro Democrático (Democratic Center) last year, and he ran on the slogan of ‘mano firme, corazón grande,’ or ‘firm hand, big heart,’ campaigning in opposition to Santos’s high-profile push to negotiate a lasting peace settlement with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).  While Uribe should be happy with the results of the senatorial elections, it’s clear that the ‘Uribe bloc’ is still far smaller than the ‘Santos bloc,’ which includes three major parties:

  • The Partido Liberal Colombiano (Colombian Liberal Party), once Colombia’s largest center-left party, has converged with the other parties in the Santos-led coalition, pulling it ever closer to the center-right in recent years.  The party split over whether to support Uribe, who began his political career in the Liberal Party.  Though it fielded separate presidential candidates in both 2006 and in 2010, it will support Santos in 2014.
  • The Partido Social de Unidad Nacional (Social Party of National Unity, ‘Party of the U’) is a conservative party formed in 2005 by Liberal uribistas, and the ‘U’ once stood as much for Uribe as for ‘unidad.’  It became Colombia’s largest party in the Uribe era, and it now forms the backbone of Santos’s coalition.
  • Cambio Radical (Radical Change), founded in 1998, became increasingly important over the course of the 2000s, and it formed part of Uribe’s presidential majority in the 2000s, just as it today forms part of Santos’s presidential majority.  Like the Party of the ‘U’ and the Liberal Party, it will support Santos in the upcoming presidntial election.

The major swing vote between the two blocs is the Partido Conservador Colombiano (Colombian Conservative Party).  Like the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party dates back to the 1840s, and it was once Colombia’s chief center-right party.  It’s currently part of Santos’s coalition, but it’s the weakest link among the four parties that have backed Santos since 2010, and it’s the likeliest source of future support for Uribe.  Though it supported Uribe in 2002 and 2006 and Santos in 2010, it is fielding its own presidential candidate in 2014, Marta Lucía Ramírez, a former senator and defense minister between 2002 and 2003.  That hurts Santos by depriving him of the Conservative brand (though only a few Conservative lawmakers have actually endorsed Ramírez), but it also hurts Uribe and Zuluaga by dividing the conservative opposition to Santos.

JMsantos

Uribe guided Colombia’s transition from a country paralyzed by drug-related violence into a more secure, economically vibrant regional leader between 2002 and 2010, backed by the military and economic aid of the US government.  Despite efforts to run for a third term, Uribe bowed out of the presidency in support of Santos, his defense minister.  Santos (pictured above) easily won election in June 2010, king nearly 70% of the vote in a runoff against Bogotá mayor Antanas Mockus, the candidate of the Partido Verde Colombiano (Colombian Green Party).

Almost immediately, however, Uribe started criticizing Santos, and Uribe irrevocably broke with his one-time protégé when Santos directed the Colombian government to enter into negotiations with FARC, a leftist guerrilla group that has waged an insurgency against Colombia for the better part of the last half-century.   Continue reading Uribe returns to Colombian political life as senator →

14 in 14, Colombia

14 in 2014: Colombia presidential election

Leave a comment

santosin14

7. Colombia presidential election, May 15 (with potential June runoff).Colombia Flag Icon

If Colombians went to the polls today, it’s likely they would reelect Juan Manuel Santos, a former defense secretary who came to power in 2010 as the protégé of former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe.

But five months is a long time, especially given that Santos (pictured above) is engaged in high-stakes talks with the longtime guerrilla organization Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), which has waged an insurgency against the Colombian government for nearly half a century.  Under the conservative Uribe, Colombia firmly emerged from an era of narcoterrorism and cartel-fueled violence that made the country the top battleground in the US war on drugs throughout the 1990s. Colombia today is enjoying rapid economic growth.

Uribe turned on Santos shortly after his election, and Uribe is staunchly opposed to the Colombian government’s talks with FARC, which kicked off in October 2012.  Instead, Uribe is supporting former finance minister Óscar Iván Zuluaga and has formed a new political party, Uribe Centro Democrático (Democratic Center), to challenge Santos.

Santos’s approval rating dropped to 25% in mid-2013, and while it’s slowly recovering ground, he shouldn’t necessarily take reelection for granted.  Polls, however, show that Colombians want to stick with Santos — and may resent what they see as Uribe’s attempt to claw his way back into influence over national policy.  On the left, none of the three most likely candidates seem to be able to attract enough support to win the presidency, though former Bogotá mayor Enrique Peñalosa might pose the strongest challenge as a business-friendly member of the Partido Verde Colombiano (Colombian Green Party).

One issue that could motivate the Colombian left is the removal of Bogotá mayor and former M-19 rebel Gustavo Petro in December 2013 by Colombia’s inspector general Alejandro Ordóñez, a Uribe ally — ostensibly over the issue of a 2011 clash between Petro and the city’s garbage collectors.  With Petro and his allies still protesting the decision, the capital city faces fresh elections as well early in 2014 that could highlight the deficiencies and growing pains of Colombian democracy.

 NEXT: Belgium

Colombia

Colombia’s inspector-general summarily removes Bogotá’s left-wing mayor

1 Comment

gustavopetro

As Colombia prepares to vote in parliamentary and presidential elections in the first half of 2014, the mayor of Colombia’s capital city of Bogotá, former M-19 rebel Gustavo Petro, was removed from office yesterday in a government action that could have wide-ranging implications for Colombian politics, including the ongoing peace negotiations between the administration of president Juan Manuel Santos and FARC, the leftist guerrilla group.Colombia Flag Icon

Colombia’s inspector general Alejandro Ordóñez, an ally of conservative former president Álvaro Uribe, ordered Petro’s removal on the basis of abuse of office in respect of a showdown with Bogotá’s garbage collectors last year.  Ordóñez ruled that Petro (pictured above) violated constitutional principles by attempting to replace private contractors in December 2012 with a city-run force — garbage piled up in the streets for three days, but the contractors ultimately returned to work.  Ordóñez’s ruling claims that Petro’s actions during the showdown were unconstitutional and that, in addition to Petro’s removal from office, Petro should also be banished from Colombian politics for 15 years. The United Nations representative in Colombia has called for a meeting to discuss Petro’s removal, expressing concern for the potential violation of the rights of Bogotá citizens who elected Petro mayor two years ago.

It’s all caused somewhat of a controversy in Bogotá, given that the mayoral position is the second-most important elected position after the Colombia presidency.  Petro and his leftist supporters have taken to the streets in protest, aghast at what they believe is a politically motivated decision by a right-wing official.  Ordóñez last year removed Piedad Cordoba, a leftist politician with ties to former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, from Colombia’s Senado (Senate), banning her from public office for 18 years.

Petro’s ‘destitución‘ could affect both the ongoing negotiations in Havana between the Colombian government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), as well as the upcoming May 2014 presidential election.  His removal could discourage FARC leaders from agreeing to a final political settlement if they believe that Ordoñez and Colombia’s political elite are willing to revoke the results of a free election and remove a former guerrilla leader from a position of political power.  Petro, even if banned from holding public office himself, could also find himself with more free time to help mobilize a united leftist alternative to Santos.

Petro won the Bogotá mayoral election in October 2011 in a marquee race — Petro took 32.2% of the vote, narrowly defeating Enrique Peñalosa, a member of the Partido Verde Colombiano (Colombian Green Party) who previously served as mayor from 1998 to 2001 and who won 24.9%.  Former Colombian senator Gina Parody, with the support of another former mayor, Antanas Mockus, won 16.7%. Mockus, a bearded and bespectacled Colombian of Lithuanian descent, who briefly launched his own campaign for mayor in 2011 after resigning from the Green Party, is perhaps most well-known as the Green Party nominee for president in 2010, though he lost the runoff to Santos by a wide margin.

Though Petro has appealed the decision, Ordóñez’s office will hear the appeal, so it’s unlikely that Petro can legally reverse the decision.  His removal comes after Samuel Moreno, Bogotá’s mayor between 2008 and 2011, was removed from office in relation to improprieties in city contract appropriations, and he remains in prison pending trial for corruption — after coming to office with the lofty promise of building a subway system for Bogotá, Moreno quickly began handing out contracts to his friends and associates.  Petro’s misdeeds, by contrast, seem relatively less serious.  Though if the removal holds, Santos will be entitled to appoint an interim mayor until new elections will be held early next year.

Petro’s tenure as mayor has been relatively rocky — a protest group had already collected enough signatures to force a recall vote, and Petro’s popularity has plummeted since he took office in January 2012.  Continue reading Colombia’s inspector-general summarily removes Bogotá’s left-wing mayor →

Colombia

FARC, Colombian government to kick off talks in Oslo tomorrow (maybe)

1 Comment

Colombian government negotiators and representatives of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) are making their way to Norway today in advance of peace talks set to commence tomorrow (although delays may prevent some FARC members from arriving until later in the week).  

Although it’s probably too optimistic to predict that the Oslo talks will result in a definitive peace after 50 years of conflict, there are nonetheless signs for optimism — in many ways, think of the Oslo talks as the opening salvo for bringing the FARC issue back into the political sphere, rather than just the military sphere.

The peace talks are a somewhat audacious move for Colombia’s president Juan Manuel Santos, who has increasingly emphasized a political solution to decades of fighting between FARC and Colombian police and military forces — Santos recognized last year that Colombia was engaged in an ‘armed conflict,’ and has indicated support for victim restitution and land reform legislation.  Santos previously served as the national defense minister from 2006 to 2009 in the administration of Álvaro Uribe, and he was a key player in the Uribe administration, which is widely credited with a military operation that reduced drug production throughout Colombia and all but defeated FARC over the past decade.

So FARC, which had long ago resorted to financing its operations in part through the drug trade, is entering the negotiations from a greatly weakened position.

There’s no disputing that Colombia has experienced a renaissance since the truly bad days of the 1990s — it’s marked GDP growth in every year since 1999 — even in 2009, Colombia’s economy grew by 1.65%, and last year growth hit nearly 6%.  As tourism and foreign development have returned to Colombia and as drug violence has receded, more Colombians are moving out of poverty, and both Uribe and Santos can take credit for creating a more secure environment for economic growth.  In agreeing to the talks, Santos is hoping that he can work with FARC to make those gains permanent.

But with Uribe sniping in the background about the peace talks, and with Uribe ally and former finance minister Óscar Zuluaga already running for president against Santos in 2014 (quite possibly with Uribe’s endorsement), Santos personally will have much at stake in moving toward progress through the Oslo talks.  Uribe has taken a hard line against his one-time protegé, criticizing Santos for cozier relations with Colombia’s neighbor Venezuela and for engaging FARC in peace talks.  Uribe was much more at odds with the leftist politics of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro than Santos has been (notably, both of them — and especially Castro — worked behind the scenes to bring about the negotiations, which initiated in Havana and will likely continue in Havana after Oslo).

Attacks from Uribe and his hawkish allies are likely to increase once talks get underway.  Although José R. Cardenás writes in Foreign Policy that the talks aren’t without risk for Colombia, and that the “only thing the FARC should be negotiating is the terms of their surrender to the Colombian state and some measure of accountability for the mayhem they have caused over the past decades,” Sergio Fajardo, the governor of Antioquia, tells Americas Quarterly that the payoffs could be huge:

 I believe that giving ourselves the opportunity to live in peace is an obligation we have in Colombia. My children were born amid violence. We deserve peace and it is the responsibility of our government to find it. If we achieve peace with the FARC it will be a great relief. We still have many problems, but it would be a great step forward. There are mistakes we can’t make again. We cannot clear an area of the country without a serious and solid agreement. I believe the time to negotiate is when your opponent has put down its weapons.

The talks will focus on five key areas:

  • agricultural development and agrarian reform — how to create social programs to boost the education, health and welfare of rural Colombians, many of whom are former coca farmers and, potentially, how to break up the large latifundios to redistribute land to rural peasants;
  • political participation — how to normalize Colombian politics and secure democratic norms to prevent the future radicalization or militarization of Colombian politics;
  • ending the conflict — how to enact mechanics of a ceasefire, how to integrate FARC guerrillas back into mainstream society and how to deal with immunity and/or other security guaranties;
  • drug trade — how to maintain Colombian success in the reduction of drug trafficking, and how to enact public health and other programs for prevention; and
  • conciliation — FARC is seeking a truth commission and compensation for the victims of human rights abuses.

That’s a large agenda, though in many ways the five points are mutually reinforcing: land reform and development and better social programs will dissuade farmers from resorting to coca production, and a disarmament and ceasefire will lead to further integration of FARC into the Colombian political mainstream, giving onetime FARC leaders a stake in Colombia’s continued success. Or so a successful plan would go.

Neither Santos nor the reputed leader of FARC, Simón Trinidad, will participate directly in the Oslo talks.  But keep an eye on Rodrigo Granda, FARC’s ‘foreign minister,’ who’s been in Havana laying much of the groundwork for the negotiations with Colombia’s government, and who’s under no illusions about the difficulty ahead:

We mustn’t get our hopes up too high. We will get to know each other; we are two enemies who in many cases will be seeing each other face to face for the first time. We’ll have to start out by building trust. We will undoubtedly clarify some questions about how the talks will work – rules, places, schedules, but nothing of great significance.

In seeking a political solution to the standoff, it’s important to remember the genesis of the fight was political.

Continue reading FARC, Colombian government to kick off talks in Oslo tomorrow (maybe) →