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Giancarlo
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Los Angeles
Apr 2000
time: 02:28
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quote:
ALVARO URIBE, Colombia's president, says with glee that his idea of Friday-night relaxation is to stay at his desk until 2.00am, ringing police and army commanders across the country to quiz them about security in their areas. Most Saturdays, the president flies to a provincial town and holds a “community council”, a town meeting lasting 12 hours or more at which locals can interrogate officials about everything from sewers to policing.
It is no wonder that after ten months in office in Latin America's most conflict-ridden country, Mr Uribe, an intense former lawyer, looks exhausted. But Colombians seem impressed—especially since Andrés Pastrana, his predecessor, was not exactly a stakhanovite. “I haven't promised miracles. But I have said to my fellow citizens [that] you will have my permanent effort, day and night,” says Mr Uribe.
That effort is starting to pay off. Colombians elected Mr Uribe last year because he promised to restore order to a democracy foundering under the violence of two guerrilla armies and another one of rightist vigilantes, all of them financed by drugs, kidnapping and/or extortion. Apart from its human toll, insecurity had begun to undermine Colombia's economy, too. When Mr Pastrana's lengthy effort to negotiate peace with the FARC, the largest guerrilla army, collapsed last year, many Colombians saw in Mr Uribe a last chance.
Now there are incipient signs that decline has halted. Mr Uribe has begun to expand the security forces, unleashed a massive assault on the drug trade and pushed through economic reforms. Not everything is going well. But the president remains extraordinarily popular. When last month the FARC killed 9 hostages, including two politicians, during a bungled rescue bid by the army, Mr Uribe took responsibility for the debacle: his popularity promptly climbed from 60% to over 70%.
The government's priority is improving security. With American military aid, Mr Pastrana had begun to make Colombia's army more professional, setting up a helicopter-borne rapid-reaction force. Mr Uribe aims to go further: he wants to impose the state's control over those (mainly rural) areas, amounting to half of a vast country, where it has been lacking, while trying to increase the pressure on the rebels, partly through improved intelligence.
To do this, Mr Uribe plans to raise defence spending (including police and pensions) from 3.5% of GDP to 5.8% by the end of his term in 2006. Using emergency powers, he has levied a one-off war tax on companies and the rich. So far, the government has trained 10,000 extra police, and raised a new force of 16,000 part-time “peasant soldiers”. Their task: to establish garrisons in 192 rural towns which lacked police, something officials say will be achieved by the end of this year. By then, too, a new American-trained army battalion will start guarding Colombia's main oil pipeline against sabotage. Two new mountain battalions have been deployed to deny the FARC the freedom of the high Andean cordilleras; another two will follow.
The government is trying to improve its intelligence. After the collapse of the peace talks, the United States changed its policy, allowing its aid to be used against guerrillas instead of just against drugs. So it is passing on more information to the Colombians; an extra $105m in aid, tacked on to a bill paying for the Iraq war, will be partly spent on additional spy planes. On the ground, all citizens are being encouraged to become informers.
Mr Uribe claims results already. He says that between January and April, killings were down by 21% and kidnappings by 32% on the same period last year; in Medellín, where the army took control of a slum area, killings fell by 32%. More than 1,500 rebels have deserted. And the rightist paramilitaries have been less active; some have begun peace talks.
Yet caution is in order. After a decade of steady expansion, the FARC does seem to have suffered a strategic setback. It has gone back to hit and run attacks by small groups. It has also staged terrorist bombings in the cities, though its urban network looks weak. But the improvement in security is so far largely one of perception. A campaign to encourage Colombians to use main roads at holiday weekends, under army escort, has been a particular success: road traffic is up by 65%, says Mr Uribe. Yet the FARC looks little damaged: the army has failed to capture any of its top leaders. “The guerrillas have fallen back, and are waiting to evaluate the weak points in the government's strategy,” says Alfredo Rangel, a security analyst.
In other words, Mr Uribe's effort will fail unless it is refined and sustained. There are two main criticisms. One comes from human-rights groups. They say that the government has targeted civilians in guerrilla areas, with mass arrests. And they worry that it is weakening independent oversight of the security forces. An anti-terrorist bill in Congress would give the police and the army judicial powers of search and arrest. But they would have to inform the prosecutor's office of arrests. The government needs “permanent legal tools against terrorism” but “we won't limit basic freedoms”, Mr Uribe claims.
The second, related, criticism is that the government has yet to work out an effective strategy for rebel-held areas. Under emergency powers, which have since lapsed, Mr Uribe decreed two particularly war-torn areas to be “rehabilitation and consolidation zones”. But this achieved little. There is “no effort to win over the civilian population” in these areas, says Antonio Navarro Wolff, an independent senator. He also notes that the FARC has begun proselytising in universities.
Perhaps the most dramatic action has been against drugs. The United States has finally completed delivery of a large fleet of 21 crop-dusting aircraft to spray coca fields with weedkiller. Mr Uribe is using them with gusto. His government has increased the weedkiller's strength, and let small plots as well as large plantations be sprayed. By December, the UN reported a big fall in coca cultivation, to 102,000 hectares (252,000 acres), a 30% fall in a year. Since then, the government has been wiping out 15,000 hectares a month. By next year, Colombia will not be a significant exporter of drugs, claims Fernando Londoño, the justice and interior minister.
Many are sceptical of that claim. “The minister is very optimistic,” admits Mr Uribe. Again, perseverance will be crucial. “We might knock it all out by the end of the year,” says Anne Patterson, the American ambassador in Bogotá. “The challenge is to keep it down, in terms of commitment and resources.”
One problem is what happens to the 600,000 or so people employed by the drug trade. Mr Uribe inherited an economy that has grown only at a sickly pace since a deep recession in 1999. The public debt was spiralling out of control. As well as tax rises, his government pushed through pension and labour reforms, and has cut spending. It has won extra money from the IMF and multilateral development banks. It is now on track to meet the target for this year's fiscal deficit of 2.5% of GDP. Growth has picked up, too: in the first quarter, GDP expanded by 3.8% compared with the same period last year. But sustaining this requires new investment, and for that “security is the key”, says Sergio Clavijo, a central-bank director.
Mr Uribe has made least progress in his pledge to reform politics. A referendum on constitutional reforms, which may be held in July, has turned into a patchwork quilt, including some fiscal measures. “It is not a panacea, but it is a step in the right direction,” Mr Uribe concedes. Meanwhile, Congress is promoting a political reform which scarcely deserves the name. Some analysts reckon that the failings in this area are down to the arrogance of Mr Londoño.
But the government faces a bigger problem: Mr Uribe runs everything himself. Even his ministers are said to be in awe of him; he undermines them by dealing directly with their subordinates. “No Colombian president in living memory has had such omnipresence,” says Fernando Cepeda, a political scientist at Bogotá's Andes University. “He has restored presidential authority, but will he restore the authority of the authorities, of ministers, governors and mayors?” That is the challenge for the next three years. |
Now Venezuela needs an Uribe.. not a Chavez.
I always knew Uribe would get the country on the right track. With his politics similar to mine he took a no BS approach to things, he used blunt force against illogical rebel groups, instated measures that helped the economy grow, and he built up the armed forces. Now cocaine production is down 30%.
Viva Colombia!
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11-06-2003 08:50
The first bolded section. 
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