Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos (R) and presidential candidate Oscar Ivan Zuluaga in a TV debate in Bogota, on June 9, 2014. (GUILLERMO LEGARIA/AFP/Getty Images)
Summary
Colombians will go to the polls for the second time in a month June 15 to decide whether to re-elect Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. Santos is running on a platform of reconciliation with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army. His opponent, Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, who is running with the full sponsorship of former President Alvaro Uribe, appears to offer a return to the more militaristic policies of the Uribe days.
Far from offering hope for the future, the scandal-ridden campaign has left Colombians divided and unhappy. Santos and Uribe are two erstwhile allies fighting a public battle through Uribe's proxy, Zuluaga, myopically focused on the fate of a decades-old ideological war. The election can easily be cast as a referendum on the peace talks because the two candidates agree on most everything else. Both hail from the business-friendly, pro-free trade side of the political spectrum. But the dominance of the peace talks in both public discourse and government action leaves Colombians wondering about issues much closer to home than the negotiating table in Havana.
Analysis
While Zuluaga has threatened to completely cancel the negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (better known by its Spanish acronym, FARC), his stance has softened somewhat in the wake of winning the first round of the election. To gain the endorsement of Marta Lucia Ramirez, the Conservative Party leader and former defense minister, Zuluaga has said he would consider continuing the talks but only with firm preconditions, including requiring the group to cease all militant activities first. If Zuluaga wins, delays in the talks are likely, perhaps even for a significant period. The talks so far have proceeded with a high level of secrecy, so a change in administration could easily lead to revelations about closed-door negotiations that would make continuing the talks politically untenable.
For its part, the rebel group will negotiate with whoever holds office. The Colombian military combined with desertion have greatly reduced the group's strength over the past decade. It is no longer able to carry out attacks on hardened targets, instead being reduced to attacking fixed linear infrastructure in the hinterlands. These attacks will not win the war for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The prospect of a peaceful demobilization is therefore quite tempting. The attacks attract the attention of Bogota, which owns and operates the country's energy pipeline network through national energy champion Ecopetrol. This makes the government also quite eager to resolve the issue. So while delays in talks may occur, there is pressure on both sides to reach an agreement.
Santos is defending his presidency with a series of last-minute announcements of success in the talks. He has also revealed that the government is in active negotiations with the National Liberation Army designed to establish a basis for serious peace talks. But while the subject of the peace talks is certainly controversial, the political atmosphere in Colombia is colored by widespread frustration and disappointment that the Santos administration has failed to address basic social and economic issues.
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While some progress was made during Santos' administration, there were also several steps backward, particularly with regard to economic development. Colombia's successful lobbying effort to convince the U.S. legislature to approve a free trade agreement with the South American nation has had unintended and unwelcome consequences. Colombia's infrastructure is poor, and its farmers and manufacturers are uncompetitive. Rural strikes have posed a serious challenge for the Santos administration at a time when competition from U.S. agricultural products has put Colombian farmers at a disadvantage. Even manufacturers are beginning to reconsider operations in Colombia. In a notable shift, Mazda closed down its factory in Colombia at the end of April, opting instead to import cars from facilities in Japan, Thailand and Mexico.
In short, while Santos and Zuluaga have been duking out their differences over the negotiations, Colombians are increasingly uneasy about the direction the country has taken. The centrality of the talks to the elections reflects the focus of the government to the exclusion of other critical issues affecting Colombians on a daily basis. Whoever wins June 15 will almost certainly affect the outcome of peace talks, but the major questions of social inclusion, economic growth and national development will remain unanswered.
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