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Colombia: peace and other problems

LatinNews

The leading source of political & economic intelligence on Latin America since 1967

发布日期: 2022年9月2日

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, enjoying a political honeymoon period, is pressing ahead with his plans for peace negotiations. Perhaps inevitably, however, a few small clouds are forming on his government’s political horizon. On 30 August an enabling bill for President Petro’s “total peace” plan was lodged with Colombia’s congress. The draft legislation authorises multilateral peace talks with Colombia’s different rebel and criminal groups. It also establishes that any resulting agreements and treaties will be binding on future governments.

The Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) guerrilla group has agreed to negotiations. Most other groups have signalled their willingness to discuss a ceasefire, except for Comandos de la Frontera, a small dissident group which operates in an area near the border with Ecuador. The bill is likely to be approved since the pro-government coalition controls a majority of seats in both chambers of congress. For the moment, peace is popular. An Invamer poll conducted at the end of August gave President Petro a 56% approval rating against 20% disapproval.

There are two causes for caution at this stage. One is that after decades of deep-rooted conflict, and despite promises of ceasefires, violence does not abruptly stop. There have been a number of incidents showing that the ‘old Colombia’ is still very much part of daily reality.

There were running shootouts between police and local gangs in Buenaventura on 30 August. On the same day four men were gunned down in Putumayo department. On 29 August two journalists (Leiner Montero and Dilia Conteras) were shot dead in Fundación, in the northern department of Magdalena, a region where the Clan del Golfo and other criminal groups are active.

Petro had announced his search for a “multilateral ceasefire” from Ituango in the conflict-riven north-central department of Antioquia; his advance security detail found and de-activated a bomb close to where he was due to speak.

The second cause for caution can be described as ‘unforced errors’ or areas where the new government has made mistakes or shown weakness. One has been the appointment by congress of two new judges to the national electoral council (CNE). It subsequently emerged that one of the appointees, César Lorduy, was accused of murdering a 16-year-old girl in 1979 (a case which remains unsolved), while the other, álvaro Hernán Prada, was implicated in a case of witness tampering. Congressional deputies said the appointments had been ‘fixed’ as part of dubious political deals.

Having appointed a new military and police leadership on the basis of what he called “zero corruption and zero human rights abuses”, Petro may also have been embarrassed by revelations concerning the new chief of the national police, General Henry Armando Sanabria. Feminist and human rights organisations say that he was police commander in Cartagena from 2019 to 2021 when the local police in the capital of the northern department of Bolívar persecuted shanty town dwellers, street sellers, and LGBTI groups.

Police scandal. The groups in Cartagena claim that the police under General Henry Armando Sanabria’s command shot and killed a 17-year-old, claiming incorrectly that he was an armed gang member. Sanabria, they say, has never admitted this error or apologised (although the general did visit relatives of three men shot dead in an extra-judicial killing by police last July in Chochó, a district in Sincelejo, the capital of the northern department of Sucre).

Another recognition that change will be difficult also came from the Invamer poll tracking Petro’s approval rating. Although supporting peace, some of the responses showed continuing pessimism. The survey in five major cities showed that 33% of respondents believe the situation in Colombia is ‘improving’, but a higher proportion of 48% believe it is ‘getting worse’. Among those who felt things were getting worse, 38% highlighted unemployment and the economy; 19% cited public order and security; and 18% referenced corruption.

Springtime in relations with Venezuela. The thaw in relations between Colombia and Venezuela gathered pace over the last week, but the two countries still face a range of complex issues to resolve.
Armando Benedetti, Colombia’s new ambassador to Venezuela, this week made a whirlwind tour of top government officials in Caracas. He met Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez, the president of the national assembly; Jorge Rodríguez, the vice-president of the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello, and other dignitaries.
Delcy Rodríguez tweeted that the two countries were “initiating a new stage to build robust and lasting diplomatic relations”. Félix Plasencia, the new Venezuelan ambassador to Colombia, had a rather lower profile in his first week, but all the signs are that relations are genuinely improving after seven years of mutual suspicion.
There are plans for a summit meeting between Presidents Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and Gustavo Petro of Colombia as early as October. There is also much anticipation that the long 2,219km common border will soon be re-opened to traffic and trade.
However, much will depend on how the two countries resolve several sensitive issues. Re-opening the border, for example, requires a minimal level of agreement over how security issues will be handled. There has traditionally been significant cross border movement by Colombian guerrillas and criminal groups that have been tolerated or supported by the Caracas government.
The treatment of Venezuelan refugees and migrants in Colombia is also a sensitive issue. Political persecution and economic collapse have forced an estimated 5m Venezuelans to move to Colombia. Cabello, often seen as the number two in the Venezuelan chain of command, said that those Venezuelans living in Colombia who had broken the law in Venezuela would now be subject to extradition, triggering a rapid ‘no’ from the Colombian side. Petro shut down that possibility with a one-line Twitter response, stating that “Colombia guarantees the right of asylum and refuge”.
Another important issue is the fate of the Monómeros petrochemical plant in Barranquilla, Colombia. The plant was majority controlled by Venezuela, but in effect was expropriated by the right-wing Colombian government of Iván Duque (2018-2022) who appointed directors linked to the interim government of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó. There have since been claims of corruption and chaotic management at the plant.
The Maduro government wants to regain control, not least to expose what it sees as opposition mismanagement. Colombia has acknowledged that a new board of the company must be appointed by Maduro. However, Petro wants Colombia to buy a 51% controlling stake in Monómeros, which he sees as strategically essential, through its production of fertilisers, to his plan to boost food and agricultural production.????