COLOMBIA
Future Holds More of the
Same
Analysis by Javier Darío Restrepo
BOGOTA (IPS) - Few doubt that
former defence minister Juan Manuel
Santos will be the next president of
Colombia, and that he will continue the
policies of President Álvaro Uribe.
Santos, as Uribe's heir, will basically
be more of the same.
The legacy of the right-wing Uribe, who
has governed since 2002, is described in
starkly black and white terms, and is
seen as a blueprint for the next four
years, after the Jun. 20 presidential
runoff election.
Although she is a staunch critic of
Uribe, political analyst Claudia López
admitted that "He is leaving behind a
better country than the one he found in
2002, when the guerrillas seemed
invincible and violence was at a record
high level in Colombia."
But, she added, "This was at the cost of
weakening virtually all of the country's
institutions."
Colombia has been in the grip of a civil
war since 1964, when the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the
smaller National Liberation Army (ELN)
guerrillas rose up in arms. The
far-right paramilitary groups emerged in
their present form in the 1980s, to
combat the leftist insurgents alongside
the government forces.
This South American country is the top
supplier of drugs to the United States
-- the world's single biggest market for
drugs -- and the third largest recipient
of U.S. military aid, after Israel and
Egypt.
Columnist Juan Carlos Botero offered a
summary of what Uribe has achieved: he
demobilised the paramilitary militias,
backed the FARC into a corner, revived
the economy, and curbed kidnappings,
massacres and attacks by armed groups on
towns and cities.
In fact, Uribe is reaching the end of
his second term with popularity ratings
of over 70 percent.
But on the other side of the equation,
Botero listed a number of scandals: over
the so-called "false positives" -- young
civilians killed by the army and passed
off as guerrilla casualties in the
military's counterinsurgency campaign --
and over the government's Agro Ingreso
Seguro (stable farm income) programme,
under which some of the country's
largest landholders received millions of
dollars in subsidies.
Other scandals have involved bribes to
legislators, ties between pro-Uribe
lawmakers and the paramilitaries, and
years of spying on human rights
defenders, opposition politicians,
journalists and even Supreme Court
judges by the domestic intelligence
agency that operates directly under the
authority of the president's office.
The writer also pointed to the country's
international isolation as a result of
human rights abuses and the various
scandals, and to the constant rifts
between the government and the
judiciary.
When Santos argues why voters should
cast their ballots for him next Sunday,
he talks about safeguarding Uribe's
legacy and the "indisputable progress
made in terms of boosting security,
social coverage and investor
confidence."
But those who know him say Santos did
not spend his whole life preparing
himself to become president just to play
the part of a docile heir apparent.
The direction that Colombia will take
over the next few years should be
examined in juxtaposition to the
personality of the man expected to
become the next president, after taking
46 percent of the vote in the first
round on May 30, compared to 21 percent
for his nearest rival, Antanas Mockus of
the Green Party.
At the age of 14, Santos stated that he
wanted to become president; at 16,
bucking the trend among his generation,
he enrolled in the naval academy. He
studied economics and business
administration at the University of
Kansas and went on to earn master's
degrees at the London School of
Economics and Harvard.
Disciplined and single-minded, and with
a reputation as an experienced and
no-nonsense decision-maker, he served as
foreign trade minister (1992-1994),
finance minister (2000-2002) and defence
minister (2006-2009).
With his tough exterior, he sacked 27
army officers -- including three
generals -- over the "false positives"
scandal, and was a constant presence in
photos and television coverage of
military successes against the
guerrillas.
Santos has promised to generate more
formal sector jobs, in a country with an
unemployment rate of over 12 percent --
higher than the South American average
of eight percent.
He also says he will create no new
taxes. But economists point out that he
would be taking over a country with a
budget gap. "The government has a hole
equivalent to five percent of GDP," said
the dean of economy at the University of
the Andes, Alejandro Gaviria, a former
government director of planning.
Another of his campaign pledges is
emergency programmes to assist and
foment employment among young people.
Listening to Santos's list of campaign
promises during a recent debate, his
main rival Mockus, a two-time former
mayor of Bogotá, merely responded "And
where's the money?"
The opposition's wariness has been
further fueled by observations that six
of Santos's 10 specific campaign pledges
are slightly modified versions of the
Green Party's initiatives.
Columnist William Ospina wrote that the
elections represent merely a replacement
of one caste -- wealthy rural
landowners, like Uribe's family -- by
another -- prominent urban families,
like Santos's.
What will undoubtedly be kept alive by
Santos, according to Ospina, is Uribe's
"democratic security policy," under
which "the theft of land, forced
displacement, espionage, killings with
state weapons, subsidies to the
privileged, and scandalous levels of
poverty have prevailed."
Colombia is one of the 13 countries in
the world with the largest gaps between
rich and poor, according to the Gini
index, which measures income inequality.
Forty-six percent of the country's 42
million people live below the poverty
line, according to official figures.
Those who back Santos believe in the
"governability" that having a majority
in Congress will give him, and that his
economic policy will reflect his
personal generosity.
That generosity was described by his
long-time domestic employee, Mónica
Martínez. After Santos and his brother
Enrique won the King of Spain
International Journalism Prize in 1985
while writing for the El Tiempo
newspaper, owned by their family, they
played cards to see who would get the
money.
When Santos beat his brother, he stood
up and handed the entire amount to the
family's maid, so she could buy a house
of her own. |
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