POLITICS-COLOMBIA: Presidential Hopefuls Agree on Peace

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Yadira Ferrer

BOGOTA, May 29 1998 (IPS) - The quest for peace is the main feature uniting candidates in the presidential elections this Sunday in Colombia, pushing anti-narcotraffic campaigns off the top of their campaign agendas.

The platforms of all the presidential hopefuls are in fact so similar that voters will have to examine them with extremely closely in order to make an informed decision.

Against a background where the main rebel groups announced they would begin negotiations with the next president, the three hopefuls, Andres Pastrana, Noemi Sanin and Horacio Serpa all accepted the offer, although each said they would tackle the process differently.

Pastrana, from the Conservative Party, and standing for a multiparty movement, said he would dialogue directly with the Simon Bolivar Guerrilla Co-ordination, representing the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Popular Liberation Army (EPL).

This candidate, the only one with a sure ticket into the second round on June 25, according to the polls, thus breaks away from dialoging with each of the guerrilla groups separately as the Ernesto Samper adminstration attempted.

Pastrana, just like Sanin and Serpa, considers international mediation is important in facilitating dialogue and is proposing an agreement on international human rights law and negotiation whilst maintaining the state of conflict.

Serpa, the official candidate of the ruling Liberal Party, also said he would personally dialogue with the guerrilla leaders, but, unlike Pastrana and Sanin, would promise to withdraw the army from the area established for negotiations.

The military withdrawal from five municipalities in southern Colombia is one of the FARC preconditions for talks with the government.

The Liberal Party candidate also stated he is prepared to call a Constituent Assembly, something which has been suggested with some variations by both FARC and ELN, as the proper backdrop for civil society participation in the design of a long term peace project.

Serpa said peace must go hand in hand with “deep social, economic and political changes, the fight against citizen insecurity which is the product of other forms of violence, and the eradication of the narcotraffic problem.”

Serpa’s peace strategy, according to some observers, is framed in a sort of “social contract which offers stable rules of the game for everyone,” based on populist lines and similar to the programme Samper tried to establish.

For sociologist and writer, Alfredo Molano, Serpa’s proposal is the closest match to the demands made by both ELN and FARC.

Molano said with the advances being made, whoever is elected on May 31 to go into the second round of voting will face the challenge of opening the forum which will bring an end to fifty years of conflict in Colombia.

He also stated it would be important for the group of political forces to unite in agreement to seek a state peace policy to run beyond the four-year presidential terms.

But for Alfredo Rangel, former guerrilla and Samper’s National Security adviser, the presidential peace proposal most likely to succeed is that of Pastrana.

Rangel told IPS joint dialogue with the Simon Bolivar Guerrilla Co-ordination could be more to the taste of the insurgent groups than separate negotiations.

Furthermore, he said the stance taken by Pastrana is more likely to be accepted by the United States, a country which has shown great interest in facilitating the peace process in Colombia over recent weeks.

But Rangel does not appear convinced the next government will actually manage to reach an agreement, as the process is likely to be long and complex.

FARC military chief, Manuel Marulanda announced this weekend his group is prepared to initiate peace talks with the next president if his proposal for the withdrawal of the army from five southern towns were accepted.

To settle his proposal, Marulanda announced the creation of a commission FARC high-ranking leaders, to meet with Serpa, Sanin and Pastrana to discuss their proposals.

Along the same lines, the ELN, the second largest insurgent force, which had already announced its intention of starting a peace process, decided it would continue the talks it started in February with the new president.

The ELN suspended the agreement to carry out a meeting with the peace commissioners and other figures in June, in an effort to avoid Samper and the other presidential candidates from capitalising on this in their campaigns.

Other observers believe the remaining two smaller guerrilla groups, the Jaime Bateman Cayin commando, a dissident faction of the legalised M-19 not in the Guerrilla Co-ordination and the EPL will also follow in FARC and ELN footsteps.