Chávez uncovered
Colombian politics > TopicsBy Marsares
Sunday 3 February 2008 0:08 COT
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In front of an international community cheerfully celebrating the return to the freedom for two former FARC hostages, Hugo Chávez came back with the bill. Colombian government must recognize belligerence status for leftist FARC and ELN guerrillas, and in exchange of that, he will normalize his relationship with Álvaro Uribe Vélez. Besides, Europe should remove Colombian guerrillas from their terrorist lists.
The political chess
More surprising than President Chávez’s words is his naiveness, quite close to clumsiness. He thought he had the world kissing his feet with the release of the kidnapped, but the script had changed and he didn’t learn to adapt to it. It’s quite clear that the actual play was the unilateral release of a bigger group of hostages, in order to show results and pave the way for FARC’s political status. But the removal of the Venezuelan President as a mediator replaced kindness for insults, wasting the victim role that Uribe handed him on a plate.
The reduction of the initial group to three hostages (former vice presidential candidate Clara Rojas, former Congresswoman Consuelo González de Perdomo, and Clara’s son, Emmanuel, born in captivity) as a retaliation was the second consequence, but randomness played against him with the finding Emmanuel was already in charge by ICBF, the Colombian child welfare institute. Colombian government got strength when Emmanuel’s clinical history, including abandonment, diseases, and malnutrition, was learnt. On that moment, Clara’s release lost some of its intended effect, but Chávez/Farc was not able to calculate it and continued with the alternate plan.
He was not able to see that a bigger media blow was needed in order to mitigate all those negative effects. Returning to the initial proposal of releasing an important number of hostages, in two or three groups, would really have helped them. Replacing it with a guard of honour, red carpet and bi-national anthems showed what it really was, a show summarized by Colombian senator Piedad Córdoba in front of the cameras when she thrusted everyone aside so she could get to the front row, sending Clara Rojas behind her back.
Nevertheless, with congratulations from Uribe and international satisfaction, it was the time for Chávez to get even more, by strengthening the dialogue with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and, while receiving another group of hostages on the next few weeks, negotiating with FARC their removal from the terrorist lists in exchange of former presidential candidate and dual Colombian-French citizenship Íngrid Betancourt’s release. Uribe would allowed it. He had no other option.
But Chávez wanted to solve it à la Chávez, with arrogance and poor political reckoning. Politics must be played in private and with tact, not with politicians letting themselves uncovered in public by praising their "comrades", as Venezuelan Interior Minister Raúl Rodríguez Chacín treated them. The same mistake he made before with his hugs to guerrilla commander Iván Márquez, which makes the denounces about the alleged protection FARC gets in Venezuela published by Spanish newspaper El País last December a more strong case.
A positive ’strip-tease’
But not everything is bad. Unmasked and with their cards on the table it’s easier to negotiate. This points mediators where they should direct their efforts to, and French External Affairs Minister had already perceived it. If they want to be removed from the terrorist list they should release all the kidnapped, to abandon that infamous activity and to start a peace process.
As for the belligerence status, that would be recognizing a situation which does not exist: a civil war, that is, one part of the population fighting the other one and admitting a parallel State, with territorial control and a jurisdiction on it. Its international implications are quite obvious, because they would give them a chance to establish diplomatic relationships and to obtain a possible political asylum. An unthinkable loot for a drug-dealing, terrorist guerrilla which is only able to control the land it steps on, because it should be permanently moving in order to avoid its annihilation.
What’s next
Chávez is still in the game, but with a different role. He’s not a mediator anymore, but a representative for FARC, and this may ease things in a certain way. Through him the FARC’s Secretariat is reachable. In this sense, Sarkozy regains his importance as a mediator, as well as Spain and Switzerland. On the contrary, the countries that acted as observers on the frustrated release are out of the game because their obvious partiality.
Colombian-Venezuelan relationships become reduced to cold politeness and trade interests, with both countries looking separatedly for new markets to mitigate the troubled waters to be sailed. Colombia, nevertheless, has a powerful ally, Venezuelan opposition, which already showed its ability to restrain the Chalivarian project. Their rejection to Chávez and FARC closeness is a favourable card for our country.
With the game on the Colombian field, it’s an opportunity for Uribe to show with facts his real interest on the humanitarian exchange, by rebuilding Sarkozy’s international mediation, instead of the Catholic Church, which holds a weak political capacity. The same thing goes with the Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo, whose war discourse and diplomatic inflexibility have made his work a dry land for peace.
It’s time for Uribe to replace him with someone else, politically skilled and with moral authority, who can take up again the dialogue with FARC and his Venezuelan spokesperson. Sergio Fajardo, Medellín former mayor, would be an interesting candidate because his positive results on that city and the way he is perceived in the government. But we know Uribe dislikes changes and the obscure psychiatrist will continue wasting incapacity during the two and a half years the Democratic Security has to go.
For now, we must let things calm down and heads to cool down too. There will be no more releases in the short term, though it’s likely that Íngrid Betancourt’s would become the next card to be played by her kidnappers. That’s why, from now and then, contacts between mediators and this subversive team should be made with caution and discretion, seeking the release of all the hostages and the beginning of a political solution to the Colombian conflict without compromising the social rule of law state defined on the Constitution.
Epilogue
In politics you have to split hairs, winning allies before making a risky play, to calculate its costs and benefits and, above all, acting with the right timing when everything worked be on your favour. Patience, ability, intelligence, and head cold are needed. There’s no room for emotions here.
But Chávez’s shrewdness leaves a lot to be desired. He has the mentality of a troop man, trained to carry orders out, instead of planning them. It’s explainable that, as a ruler, he just lurches, only supported by his check book. FARC, who have the patience of a spider but the vision of an ant, needed an eagle to help them to come back to the world, and they found a buffalo who only can lunge instead.
This article was originally published 12 January 2008 in equinoXio. Translated from Spanish by Julián Ortega Martínez.
Tags: Álvaro Uribe, Íngrid Betancourt, belligerence status, Clara Rojas, Colombia, democratic security, ELN, Emmanuel, FARC, France, guerrilla, Hugo Chávez, terrorism, Venezuela
friday 8 february 2008, 0:54 COT
This amounts to a CIA or paramilitary propaganda article. FARC have been in Colombia for almost 5 decades because the Colombian ruling elites have been unable to provide social justice. Uribe is just bleeding of hatred because one day FARC decided to tax (FARC call it vaccine) his cocaine business. Uribe just wouldn’t take it and promised that he would spend the rest of his life fighting the communist campesinos that provide FARC with moral support. For him, Chavez is just another communist campesino, not different in color or accent to the members of FARC. Here is where the US enters the equation. US want to eliminate mestizo-mulatto Chavez because he decided to give Venezuelan’s poor the money oligarchs used to put in their personal bank accounts in Manhattan. US wants that money back in US banks supporting the falling dollar. Chavez preferred to give the US the middle finger.