Has Incoming Colombian President Santos Inherited a "Captured State"?

[Judi Lynn]

Has Incoming Colombian President Santos Inherited a "Captured State"?
By Coletta Youngers, August 6, 2010

On Saturday August 7, 2010, former defense minister Juan Manual Santos will be sworn in as Colombia’s next president, surrounded by an estimated 380,000 members of the police and military and an array of foreign dignitaries. If all goes according to plan, one of those dignitaries will be Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa. However, Santos’ initial efforts at rapprochement with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, also invited to the inauguration, were nipped in the bud by sitting president Alvaro Uribe, whose dramatic accusations on July 21 of Venezuelan government tolerance of the FARC (including key leaders) in its territory led to a complete rupture in diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Uribe’s legacy will no doubt be contested for some time. His admirers claim that he finally broke the back of the guerrillas, reigned in the paramilitaries through a demobilization program, and has made the country a safer place to live overall. Some go so far to say that Colombia is now in a post-conflict situation.

That would not be the view, however, of the country's estimated 4.5 million internally displaced persons or the Afro-Colombians and indigenous communities being pushed off their land by right-wing paramilitaries (now conveniently called “criminal gangs at the service of narco-trafficking”) to make way for large-scale economic projects like the monoculture of palm oil and commercial gold mining or those in the squalid urban areas where crime has always been rampant. (And it is worth noting that even in cities like Medellín, crime is on the rise again.)

According to Uribe’s critics (myself among them), his eight-year legacy includes:

•An estimated 16,000 politically-motivated killings, including 4,000 by the “demobilized” paramilitaries.

•A doubling in the number of annual killings by the Colombian security forces, including a “false positives” scandal in which more than 2,000 poor Colombians were presented as guerrillas killed in combat.

•The second highest number of internally displaced persons in the world (the Sudan is first) with ethnic minorities disproportionately affected and with over 40 displaced leaders killed in recent years for advocating for their rights.

•A total of one – just one – paramilitary leader convicted as a result of the Justice and Peace Law.

•A scandal that Washington-based human rights groups call “Worse than Watergate,” in which the notorious DAS security agency was spying on everyone from the children of human rights activists to Constitutional Court judges – and eavesdropping in on the Court’s confidential sessions and sabotaging their activities, including by trying to link them to terrorist groups.

•A complete lack of respect of judicial autonomy and full support for continued impunity for human rights violators.

•Increased inequality, poverty, and unemployment.

More:
http://www.fpif.org/blog/Colombia_alvaro_uribe_juan_santos?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FPIF+%28Foreign+Policy+In+Focus+%28All+News%29%29

[naaman fletcher]

1. unemployment

Is down under Uribe. That's an easy figure to check so I wonder what else here is wrong:

http://www.indexmundi.com/colombia/unemployment_rate.html

[Wilms]

2. Source: CIA World Factbook

And all the entries are "estimates".

[naaman fletcher]

3. And what is the authors source?

My guess he is like certain people here who simply decide everything for Colombia is bad and getting worse, and contrary evidence to that must be all fake.

[Wilms]

4. Everything?

Not even the author claimed that. But you missed that bit.

[naaman fletcher]

5. I didn't claim he did..

I said "my guess" is he is "like certain people".

On another note, I'd love to see data showing unemployment is worse.

[Wilms]

6. My post stands.

:hi:

Here's another mess of yours I had to clean up.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=405&topic_id=39794&mesg_id=39835

[naaman fletcher]

7. and mine stands that his data is wrong

and nobody can post better data