Colombia’s inspector general, Alejandro Ordóñez, announced Gustavo Petro, the mayor of Bogotá, would have to leave office over the alleged mismanagement of the capital’s rubbish collection service. However, supporters say the former left-wing rebel has been the victim of a “right-wing coup.” Tens of thousands of people in Colombia have taken to the streets to support Petro. He was a former guerrilla and member of M-19 who later joined the peaceful opposition.
Mario Murillo talking:
It was a wink and a nod after the 2008 assassination of Raúl Reyes that the U.S. was directly involved in that. It was never disclosed, and with the great detail Dana Priest put out in The Washington Post on Sunday, clearly, confirms what so many people were saying. But it’s really not a surprise, in the sense that the U.S. has been immersed in Colombia for so many years, even before Plan Colombia. We could even say the origins of the FARC came about as a result of Kennedy’s push to liquidate any kind of opposition in the countryside in Colombia through the Colombian armed forces.
I think it has two implications, one from the Colombian standpoint and the second from the U.S. standpoint. If we’re looking at it from the U.S. standpoint—and in terms of justifying targeted assassinations on an international scale, and making it—and rationalizing it. And you see it in the report, how White House officials and national security lawyers were saying, “Yes, these FARC rebels, Raúl Reyes, posed a threat to the U.S. and to Colombia, and so we had a justification to target them militarily.” And I think anybody concerned about the rule of law, that kind of operation happening with a complete lack of government oversight, of congressional oversight, is—it should be alarming.
From the standpoint of Colombia, I think Petro’s clip is a good indication of the hypocrisy of U.S., “fighting terrorism” in Colombia, when we think about the complete lack of pursuing the right-wing paramilitaries in Colombia who for decades have been killing, massacring, disappearing peasants throughout the country, and that basically in the article it points out that U.S. officials saying we were not targeting the more violent paramilitaries in this process. So you have a complete double standard in terms of describing terrorism on the ground and then the U.S. military directly involved in trying to liquidate the FARC as the only culprits of violence or the only instigators of violence in the country.
Charlie Roberts talking:
There is an official in Colombia known as the inspector general, who is chosen by the Senate. He happens to be a follower of Uribe, and he is an avowed opponent of the peace talks with the FARC. He has taken an action to try to remove Gustavo Petro, who’s the popularly elected mayor of Bogotá, on grounds of—not of criminal conduct, not of corruption, but of mismanaging a garbage—the trash removal situation in Bogotá. He is authorized under the Colombian constitution to remove elected officials and unelected officials on several grounds, and he has thrown out hundreds of mayors.
This situation, however, is different. It’s different, first of all, because Bogotá is the largest city, and it’s also different because Petro is one of the leaders of Colombia’s democratic left. Petro negotiated peace as part of the M-19 24 years ago with the government. If the government is actually intending to negotiate peace with the FARC, then they have to offer them political guarantees to be able to participate in Colombian politics. And here, with this arbitrary action by the inspector general against Mayor Petro, he’s sending a very strong message to the FARC. The message is: You can lay down your weapons and run for popular office, but if you get elected, we’re going to see what we can do to throw you out of office, because there are sectors of the Colombian elite that are not prepared to allow democratically elected figures who propose real social change here in Colombia, which is one of the most unequal countries in the world. They’re not going to allow them. They’re going to do anything possible to throw them out of office, which is what he’s trying to do right now.
the inspector general announced his decision on December 9, yet it has not yet gone into effect. That day, tens of thousands of people came to the main plaza, Plaza de Bolívar, in the center of Bogotá, and Mayor Petro addressed the crowd. And in four of the following five days, there were massive demonstrations. Tens of thousands of people came. Members of what is known as the guardia indígena, which are indigenous persons from the south of Colombia, came up to Bogotá. They are armed with sticks—that is all. Petro made two very clear statements in response on the first day. He said, “We must act peacefully.” No violence whatsoever by his supporters. But he said, “We also must express ourselves.”
What is happening is—well, Colombia is a country where there is a certain obsession with doing everything as per the law, but there are always different legal explanations and different legal arguments. In this case, on the one hand, you have this authority of the inspector general to remove officials from office, but at the same time, Colombia has ratified the American Convention on Human Rights, which states that no public elected official can be removed from office other than by a competent court. So there’s now a major debate underway in Colombia. Even people who haven’t supported Petro are upset with this action by the inspector general, because they see that it is arbitrary, that it is aimed at ending the peace talks with the FARC, that it is aimed at beheading the democratic left of Colombia. His decision also excludes Petro—if it goes through, it would exclude Petro from any participation in political activity for 15 years.
And so, Mr. Petro has gone to Washington. He spoke with members of Congress, State Department, and he also went to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which is the organ in charge of overseeing implementation of the American Convention on Human Rights, seeking precautionary measures, which is a device where the commission, if they grant these measures—that’s still pending—would be saying that there’s an imminent threat of irreparable harm to Mr. Petro’s human rights and, by the way, the rights of the hundreds of thousands of people who voted for him to have him elected.
— source democracynow.org
Charlie Roberts, member of the Colombia Human Rights Committee and board chair, U.S. Office on Colombia.