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| Photo: GOL |
De la Espriella is further to the right than Uribe Vélez in everything. He is also more openly violent in his political tendencies and proposals as much as in his private life. The lawyer for the right-wing paramilitaries, drug traffickers and an advisor to the paramilitaries in Santa Fe, de Ralito and a man who said that ethics have nothing to do with law. Such a person will govern without any ethics, or rather with the ethics of the murderer, the thief, the human rights violator. He will return the country to the 1980s and 1990s when every president pretended that the military killed no one. However, De la Espriella, just like Bukele in El Salvador, sees no need to fake anything, other than empathy.
It will be a more violent and extremist government than any from the past and the international context helps them in that. For decades Colombian social democrats have looked to the USA and Europe to save the country. Some of them even promised us that Obama would save the country. Such stupidity was common amongst the NGOs. There is nothing wrong in denouncing human rights violations in international settings, even before capitalist institutions such as the European Parliament or the US Congress but trusting in them to put an end to such violations when their companies are the beneficiaries, instigators and in many cases the direct agents in massacres is naïve. However, it is true that sometimes the international institutions have helped soften a situation, but never have they put an end to it. To believe that others will save Colombia and not the Colombian people is not just naïve it is dangerous. The international context will favour the worst excesses of De la Espriella should he become president.
The NGOs used to take advantage of the conjuncture and the supposed international commitment to human rights. This commitment was always conditional but there was a consensus that western powers, should, at least, pretend to be worried and sometimes the social democratic forces in Europe took some steps, when they were in power, or forced other political forces to some something minimal. Their willingness to do so, depended on the interests at stake and the implications for themselves. But times have changed. We see a live streamed genocide and they didn’t bat an eyelid. The USA threatens half the world and they remain silent or they support it, such as is the case with Ukraine and Iran. Even more worrying in the case of a victory for the extreme right in Colombia is that in Europe the same governments the human rights NGOs would lobby are in a campaign against all rights to dissent and engage in attacks on their own people.
In Germany the police arrest people for wearing a T-Shirt with the Palestinian flag or a keffiyeh. They violently attack peaceful protests. Germany expels or denies entry to other Europeans who support the Palestinian cause like the former minister for finance in Greece, Yanis Varoufikis. In Britain the police arrest pro-Palestinian activists, amongst them blind people, old people, priests and processes them under anti-terrorist legislation. When some activists began a hunger strike the government remained firm, as De la Espriella would say, and some of them came close to dying. They also charge pro-Palestinian doctors and try to have their medical licences revoked, not for malpractice but because of their political positions. They have reached the point of going after people for the posts on social media and not just over Palestine but also other issues. During the social explosion of 2021 in which the Colombian police murdered 84 people in a short period, the European Union remained fairly quiet and limited itself to calls for calm. Now under a De la Espriella government that represses the opposition they are not going to say much, bearing in mind that human and civil rights are also under threat in Europe.
In the USA, ICE searches houses without a warrant, arrests citizens and migrants without due process and the president does what he feels like. The international setting favours the Bukele, the Milei and the De la Espriella. Colombia’s social democrats have lost the consolation of European and Yankee “support”. They will have to fight and if the youths come out on the streets again, they will have to support them, materially, publicly, explicitly and of course not betray them as Petro did, leaving them to rot in prison. The extreme right has discounted half measures and you can’t fight them with conciliatory half measures.
Some have called out for a supposed centre that never existed in Colombia. It is not that there is no centre in Colombia, just that it is not what they say it is. The nearest thing to a centre in Colombia, is the Historic Pact. In any other country, it would be seen as such being a liberal/social democratic party, with some members more to the left and others more to the right. What it is not, is a socialist party. It says a lot about how right-wing various professional commentators are that they see in the Historic Pact, Fidel Castro entering Havana. One would wish it were so, but unfortunately it is not, nor will it be.
Whether a constituent assembly is convenient now or not, is a legitimate debate, but such an assembly is a right people have. Ask for one or not does not place Cepeda on the left, just like their opposition to an assembly does not place them in the supposed centre, though the right-wing don’t usually like assemblies where people get to make decisions. What they really want is for the HP to go further to the right, forming alliances with the “run of the mill” right like Claudia López, responsible for the murder of 14 youths in the protests against the murder of Javier Ordónez at the hands of the police in 2019. Some point to the ex-presidents as a supposed centre. They are all, without exceptions, implicated in the dirty war and it is depressing that they aim to make us think otherwise and that one has to read, not the manifestos of that “left” in the Congress or the commentators from the supposed centre to know what they did, but rather the communiqués from the period of organisations such as Amnesty International. Sipping good whiskey can affect the memory, apparently. Or maybe De la Espriella is not the only one lacking in empathy. These commentators are as much a part of the problem as the bourgeois press itself. They don’t want the country to change too much, they are living it up.
One of the problems of Petro’s government and also Cepeda’s campaign is a lack of clear left-wing proposals. Petro’s attempts to change the health system in Colombia, lacking a majority, ended up as negotiations with right wing forces in Congress, amongst them the supposed centre the commentators want an alliance with. Petro was lacking in audacity. It was also a negotiated process with the health companies such as the Spanish Keralty Group. A simple proposal, which is also simple to understand is a universal health system. To say to the people that if you come down with something minor we will tend to you to the last moment. If it is serious, likewise. If it is chronic or acute also and your income doesn’t matter as it is a universal system and so it is free.
What if Cepeda wins?
But if on the other hand, the mobilisations following the first round and the efforts the Historic Pact bear fruit and Cepeda wins, the problems won’t go away. The right-wing will simply open up another battle front. One of the first to congratulate De la Espriella was extreme Venezuelan right-winger Corina Machado and he wasted no time in returning the accusation of fraud and asked the USA for help to ensure he victory in the second round. Trump heard his call and declared his support as he has done with many authoritarians around the world. If Cepeda wins, the rabble in the opposition campaign will not hesitate to carry out a campaign similar to the Venezuela right-wing asking for sanctions, pressure and if it comes to it and the moment is ripe - ask for a military strike like in Venezuela. Petro has already laid the groundwork in that sense. He ceded to Trump on many things, narcotised his discourse on the armed conflict and spoke of a dictatorship in Venezuela. The abject cowardice he showed will come back like a boomerang. If Cepeda wins, it cannot be discounted that sooner or later they will talk of a dictatorship.
Following June 21st the fight will require fighting, something Petro never understood. The social democrats will also have to fight even if they manage to hang on to their jobs, which is what concerns many of them, though not them all.
One of the problems of Petro’s government and also Cepeda’s campaign is a lack of clear left-wing proposals. Petro’s attempts to change the health system in Colombia, lacking a majority, ended up as negotiations with right wing forces in Congress, amongst them the supposed centre the commentators want an alliance with. Petro was lacking in audacity. It was also a negotiated process with the health companies such as the Spanish Keralty Group. A simple proposal, which is also simple to understand is a universal health system. To say to the people that if you come down with something minor we will tend to you to the last moment. If it is serious, likewise. If it is chronic or acute also and your income doesn’t matter as it is a universal system and so it is free.
What if Cepeda wins?
But if on the other hand, the mobilisations following the first round and the efforts the Historic Pact bear fruit and Cepeda wins, the problems won’t go away. The right-wing will simply open up another battle front. One of the first to congratulate De la Espriella was extreme Venezuelan right-winger Corina Machado and he wasted no time in returning the accusation of fraud and asked the USA for help to ensure he victory in the second round. Trump heard his call and declared his support as he has done with many authoritarians around the world. If Cepeda wins, the rabble in the opposition campaign will not hesitate to carry out a campaign similar to the Venezuela right-wing asking for sanctions, pressure and if it comes to it and the moment is ripe - ask for a military strike like in Venezuela. Petro has already laid the groundwork in that sense. He ceded to Trump on many things, narcotised his discourse on the armed conflict and spoke of a dictatorship in Venezuela. The abject cowardice he showed will come back like a boomerang. If Cepeda wins, it cannot be discounted that sooner or later they will talk of a dictatorship.
Following June 21st the fight will require fighting, something Petro never understood. The social democrats will also have to fight even if they manage to hang on to their jobs, which is what concerns many of them, though not them all.
⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.
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