The estate owner

Wednesday 15 October 2008 0:53 COT

Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo is Colombia’s most important banker. Therefore, he is interested in the courts to work fine. His banks’ legal processes, small seizures and unpaid mortgages are a big piece of his business.

In what kind of country private citizens "suggest" the President to declare a state of emergency, him rushes to obey and no one succesfully stands on his way? In a country torn into pieces. I mean, in Colombia. Here —as showed last week— democratic guarantees matter far less than the so-called investment trust. No matter what rights are to be ridden roughshod over, to Mr Uribe the important thing is the rich to be still richer.

Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo has every reason in the world to be upset about the judiciary strike. A very important part of his banking business operates in courts. Some of the COP$571.638 billion (€186 million or US$253 million) his four banks earned in 2007 –according to the Colombia Stock Exchange– came from court offices. A 2001 research by César Rodríguez, published in the book El caleidoscopio de las justicias, shows that 70 per cent of judiciary tasks are executive processes, its plaintiffs being the banks themselves, and more of 95 per cent of cases end favourably for them.

Given all this, the declaration of state of emergency Uribe made on Thursday works this way: the largest bank owner in Colombia (who in turn is one of the largest clients and beneficiaries of the country’s judicial system) asks the President to prevent, through a state of emergency whose constitutionality is called into question, judiciary workers to keep demanding a pay rise, legally guaranteed, which has been denied because there is no enough money. Meanwhile, the President accepts such a generous suggestion and, within a night, judiciary branch does not have constitutional rights anymore. When did Colombia stopped to be a state based on the rule of law?

It is a natural thing that every guild defend their own interests. Which is not natural is that the President of the Republic does not act as the responsible of national institutions but as the foreman of Luis Carlos’s estate instead. It looks as if now we common citizens do not have any guarantee against the interests of the powerful. If our rights are not convenient to them, that’s our problem.

What remains from this shameful episode is another sample of this government’s interests and leanings. From now on, demanding a fair salary, enacted into law, will be "illegal" as long as Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo or any other big employer believes it. Things being so, who will prevent one of these tycoons to do whatever they want with their employers? At least, not the President of the Republic. Where the estate owner rules, the foreman has no sway.

This article was originally published 13 October 2008 in equinoXio. Translated from Spanish by Julián Ortega Martínez

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