Íngrid Betancourt and Sarkozy’s vaudeville

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With the 4 April demonstration the issue of a coming release of French-Colombian former presidential candidate Íngrid Betancourt, or at least, the medical treatment scheduled unilaterally by the President of France, is over.

C’est fini. Sarkozy’s vaudeville is over. There is nothing else to do. Íngrid’s release is not on FARC’s agenda, at least in the near future, nor the relief of her hard physical conditions. For FARC guerrilla, the ill, defenceless, prostrated, beaten, humiliated Íngrid is quite useful. Her suffering moves NGOs, governments, and demonstrations, and allows to increase the interests of her captivity.

The shares of Íngrid’s kidnapping are rising, prosperously, and as it happens at the financial market, no one sells when the stock exchange is up. You have to wait to the top limit to negotiate with the highest profit possible. That is the market law and, no matter if it is outrageous, Íngrid, above all Íngrid, is merchandise. But not only for the FARC which, besides all they want to get, do not hide the whiff or revenge for Raúl Reyes’s death. For the other actors involved, the former presidential candidate is also a gold mine to be exploited on their own benefit.

Nicolas Sarkozy is the first one. Remember that one of his presidential campaign slogans, seeking to attract voters, was Íngrid’s release and, now, when the honeymoon with the French shows wear and tear, he turns to the joker-woman to get back their support. He failed on the recent municipal elections, when the left made progresses. So, the "medical" plane is not a surprise, nor his proposal to come to the Colombian jungle to meet Íngrid. He just had left to say that he would swap for Íngrid as a FARC hostage.

As the "humanitarian" aircraft was coming to Colombia, very few people believed in such a mission, set up so suddenly, without consulting FARC. And there, waiting at CATAM military base in Bogotá until new order, the Falcon turns out to be pathetic. The failure was clear before even taking off from France. Why did Sarkozy do it? Publicity. He needed to show to the unruly French public opinion, who gets moved for Íngrid today, that he will do anything in order to get her release. "The intention is what matters" is the slogan behind this campaign. As he poses with Carla Bruni, Sarkozy does the math. All is fair in politics, including a beautiful wife and a scrawny hostage.

But there are others who don’t fall behind. And the Colombian president really knows how to do his game. He might be called the war recycling man. Grave, prudent, the star of the Colombian media holds his hand out to the enemy as he spits them on their faces, then saying that it’s their fault if they do not accept. In his language of a hair-gelled patriot he talks about peace, mentions God and shakes his heart, as he orders the closure of everything that means less war, starting for the reserve of the negotiation. That is why, every time a chance for talks opens, he runs to the microphones to sabotage it, not only making it public, but recycling over and over his very same conspiring proposal, decorated with new trinkets.

And of course, the indispensable Hugo Chávez is also on the fray. Now he stays quiet at the forum, but he does not fall asleep. He has his Córdoba cat’s paw prowling the presidential palace, as he hides his grandiloquence behind the findings on late Raúl Reyes’s Toshiba laptops. He knows Íngrid’s release should pass through his hands. He just has to sit and wait for the pressure to make Uribe calling him back again, maybe not the same way as before, but indeed joining Sarkozy. At Miraflores (Venezuela’s presidential residence) he will meet Íngrid and the French will do the same at the Elysée. Hum… the popularity polls will be so sweet for them.

Here everyone wins, like on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Remains to be known how much they will. That is up to Íngrid. The limit of her strength will mark the end of her suffering. When her life is about to run out, she will be more valuable than ever and it will mark the moment for the highest bidder to take her. Before, she will be stood up in this restless sleep, leaking periodically rumours to move people’s feelings. All is fair in this degraded war where life is merchandise and death, a lot of times, a sort of liberation.

This article was published 5 April 2008 in equinoXio. Translated from Spanish by Julián Ortega Martínez

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