The Geneology of the Uribe Double Standard

Despite President Uribe’s attempts to discredit it, Colombia’s opposition obtained victories throughout the country in Sunday’s local elections

President Uribe never tires of giving moral lessons, and, of course, the issue of Sunday’s elections for mayors, governors and other local authorities could not avoid becoming a target of his teachings.

This time, in recent public appearances over the last week he invited the citizens to vote en masse as a way of fighting terrorism... as long as they didn’t vote for candidates who, according to him, the FARC supported on their website and who did not reject the idea of buying votes.

Taking into account how poor and reductionist the president’s viewpoint can be when it comes to discrediting the opposition, it’s possible he was referring to an article from the weekly newspaper VOZ, reprinted last Thursday by ANNCOL, a news agency close to the FARC. The article supported Bogotá’s mayor-elect Samuel Moreno and defended him from the criticisms that he – at that time, still a candidate – had received after an unfortunate mental slip during a debate with his rivals. Moreno had responded affirmatively when asked whether he would buy 50 votes to avoid an opponent winning who had bought 50,000 votes.

Independently of whether the FARC sympathize with some candidates (which doesn’t imply that the candidates sympathize with the FARC) and of the nonsense that this country’s leftist leaders can occasionally utter, President Uribe is not exactly a model of virtue in terms of support from armed groups for candidates or electoral corruption. And added to this is the fact that a president did something he shouldn’t have: interfere in electoral politics. It’s not just me saying this, it’s also the law: the Single Disciplinary Code, which regulates the behavior of public servants in Colombia and considers it a serious offense “to use one’s office to participate in the activities of parties and political movements, and in political controversy, without consideration of the rights proscribed in the Constitution and the law.”

In the end, we all know that President Uribe is not exactly a man of the law either, although he may say so. But it’s time to refresh our memories a bit, kind readers, to see who this person is who dares to given lessons on double morality to the voters in these elections.

One of the president’s lessons this time is that one shouldn’t support candidates who are supposedly being supported by the FARC. One really no longer knows whether to laugh or get outraged in the face of such statements, especially considering the sympathy the president produced among the paramilitaries back when he was a candidate. He was practically a caudillo to them. So much so that in many parts of the country, especially in the most isolated parts where Uribe didn’t have much strength, the paramilitaries managed to get their hero into power by threatening voters, as many complaints filed at the time made clear.

And that’s not to mention that in 2001, a year before being elected, the then-candidate met several times with paramilitaries in the Middle Magdalena region, with whim he excitedly shared his concept of security, and where the paras surely saw a possibility for their criminal project to transform into a political one. Just watch these videos, which show how President Uribe feels right at home during a meeting with members of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1BdZmHhUxQ

Mocking the way that Samuel Moreno’s answer supposedly offended Uribe, Armando Neira, in a spot-on article on Uribe’s out-of-place statements on criteria for voting in these elections, throws out a hypothetical question to Uribe and his possible response, based closely on the wording of Moreno’s now-famous gaffe:

“If you, by violating the law, can save the city from falling into the hands of someone capable of buying votes and who received support form the guerrillas, would you do it?”

“Yes, without a doubt.”

And in fact, that’s just how it went. And for that purpose he counted with important allies, like a certain lady who wanted to gain a place in the high society of the Atlantic Coast at any price and who, among the exotic fauna of corruption permeated by paramilitarism and narco-trafficking, was known as “La Gata” (“the cat”). We are referring to Enilse López, ownder of a gambling company in the Atlantic region called “El Gato” (hence the nickname). She supported the Uribe cause in 2002 with the modest sum of 200 million pesos (about US$100,000). Curiously, this philanthropic lady can currently be found in prison on charges of money laundering, embezzlement and links to both drug traffickers and paramilitarism. Of course, President Uribe, as he has done with every accusation made against him, claims he received that money completely innocent to where it had come from.

And of course, we must remember the prominent role in the president’s 2002 triumph played by a person we remember with particular fondness at Narco News. We’re talking about Jorge Noguera, who at that time was the president’s campaign manager in the Magdalena department, and was later named director of the Administrative Security Department (DAS). Noguera’s right hand at that time, Rafael García, the imprisoned former head of information technology for the DAS – who with his declarations has helped clear up the facts surrounding the para-politics scandal, as well as Noguera’s complicity in the assassination of various trade unionists and social leaders by paramilitaries who received information on their victims thanks to Noguera and García – claimed that he himself had participated in an electoral fraud in which a 30,000 vote gap was filled to bring Uribe to victory in that region.

And now that the president loves to talk about the importance of electing honest candidates who don’t babble about the posibility of buying votes, it would be worth remembering that episode in the Colombian Congress in 2004, when then-representatives Yidis Pineda and Teodolindo Avendaño, after having stated publicly that they would not support the proposal to change the constitution and allow the president to run for reelection, changed their minds at the last minute after Uribe himself promised them political benefits in exchange. In this way, the last two votes needed to resurrect the reelection dinosaur (outlawed in the 1991 constitution) were cast and Uribe was able to stay in power.

To all this we must add the proven connections between pro-Uribe politicians and paramilitaries, including candidates who ran in Sunday’s election despite being under investigation, or in some cases, imprisoned, for links to such groups.

As can be seen above, President Uribe has once again thrown stones despite being far from sin himself (good Christian though he may claim to be). This time things turned out very badly for him on the political stage. In the first place, he is going to be sued by Moreno’s party, the Alternative Democratic Pole for breaking the law and obeying his dictatorial instincts, throwing the guerrillas and the opposition political parties into the same bad. And in the second, with all his mental floundering, Moreno surprisingly won by a landslide in Bogota.

It seems that the president is losing, little by little, his ability to seduce the people, even though Colombia continues to be the country of double standards par excellence. We’ll have see what comes next...