A Huge Storm is Gathering Pace in Colombia
Colombia Peace Association | 22.03.2003 11:41
We must continue to repudiate the gross human rights violations against the Colombian people by the State and its agents in the name of Uribe Velez’s ‘democratic security’ and support the “Active Abstention’ campaign against a referendum designed to make the people pay for a continuation of the abuse.
A Huge Storm is Gathering Pace in Colombia
By Liz Atherton of the CPA Back
It has been caused by a package of measures the Uribe Velez regime wants to impose on the country and for which, later this year, the people are going to be asked to vote in a referendum.
The measures are being promoted by the government as a solution to many of the countryâ s social ills - a way, for example, of paying for much needed basic sanitation, health care and education in impoverished and State-abandoned parts of the country.
However, analysts who have studied the referendum proposals conclude that they are designed to erode democracy and concentrate power by reducing political participation and that, rather than increasing the scope for spending on social necessities, they will subject the people to an IMF- imposed austerity programme to pay for Uribe Velezâ s â democratic securityâ campaign, the increasing costs of the war machine, and to make the labour scenario in Colombia more attractive for foreign investors.
And so while the text of the referendum has been approved in Congress, the call throughout the country, initiated by the Central Trade Union Federation (CUT) and now echoed by scores of trade union, human rights, community, womenâ s, youth, Afro-Colombian and Indigenous groups, is to exercise their right to actively abstain from voting.
By abstaining, they want to drive home a powerful political message - not only that they disagree with the referendum, but also that they refuse to give legitimacy to the current regime.
The resistance is infuriating the government and it is working hard to convince the people of its good intentions.
In similar fashion, with propaganda wheels whirring, a glowing picture of government social investment plans for rehabilitation and consolidation zones with their massive concentration of military might and martial law for the foreseeable future was sent out to soften public opinion.
Only recently, a mass grave containing more than 50 bodies of poor campesinos disappeared by paramilitaries, some known to have been taken in January this year, was found in a rehabilitation zone in Tolima.
Another 17 campesinos from this region, including a boy of 12, remain disappeared. Uribe has said nothing about this.
In contrast, a huge amount of attention was paid to the recent bombing of an exclusive club in Bogotá, an event seized upon by the government to place the blame with the FARC without evidence, further stirring up international condemnation of the revolutionary movement and gaining support for Uribeâ s intended military solution to the conflict.
There have been waves of military crackdowns in rehabilitation zones with massive arrests among the civilian population on trumped-up charges of suspected terrorism and subversion. Raids on private homes and the offices of trade union, social and community organisations are increasingly frequent. All in the name of Uribeâ s â democratic securityâ .
With the government in talks with State-sponsored paramilitary hit squads, which are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people each month, and offering them amnesty, people are going to need more than empty promises to be convinced that the government has their best interests at heart.
Uribe Velez only needs a positive vote from six million of the 24 million registered voters in order to carry the referendum through. Determined to reach this target, he is also planning to extend the period of voting over several months.
Top of the agenda is the reform of Congress by reducing the number of members of the house by 20 per cent (Colombian regions already have fewer representatives in Congress per head of population than most other countries). They will also need a minimum number of votes in order to be elected. This arbitrary number is currently extraordinarily high and, applied in the last elections, would have excluded some senior government ministers.
The planned rationalisation will be most devastating for opposition parties and representatives of minority groups such as indigenous people. So while the government argues it is improving democracy and fighting corruption, it is clearly concentrating power in the hands of the traditional parties, closing spaces for alternative and challenging political debate and increasing corruption opportunities.
Many of the measures outlined in the referendum were set in motion as soon as Uribe Velez took office, such as the merging of the Ministry of the Interior with the Ministry of Justice.
Further plans include suppressing the Supreme Council of Judges and limiting the authority of the Constitutional Court.
Currently, for example, the Constitutional Court can contest the fact that the military are tried in military courts for human rights abuses against civilians.
This may change. The military goes out of its way to avoid its members being tried in a civil court and much prefers to wash its dirty laundry out of sight in its own tribunals.
You can see why. A military court recently dismissed the case against senior officers and soldiers in the armed forces who, in August 2000, killed six children on a school excursion and injured four others. The court accepted that the soldiers mistook them for ELN guerrillas and were just doing their job.
Ordinary people in Colombia have very little redress at State level for the constant barrage of human rights violations they face every day from paramilitaries and the security forces. And yet the referendum proposes to deny them the few voices able to officially denounce abuses by removing departmental and municipal monitoring bodies along with municipal peopleâ s representatives.
All their work will be assigned to the also merged, yet diametrically opposed, Public Prosecutorâ s and Public Defenderâ s Office, a totally unmanageable task for them given the scale of the crisis and yet another step in the process of silencing dissent.
Colombiaâ s national newspapers have been full of Uribe Velezâ s kingly claims that he is going to create millions of jobs and massively reduce unemployment. Perhaps, in his haste to liberalise the economy, his personal vision of the future, when everyone can enjoy the prospect of a nice little job in a foreign-run sweatshop, is getting the better of him.
However, rather than creating jobs, the State restructuring proposed in the referendum will add to unemployment. Not least will be the closure or fusion of the vast majority of the 300 public administration bodies which will cost the jobs of around 40,000 employees. Most will be on the streets this year.
The economic elements of the referendum are very clearly in direct response to IMF austerity impositions and are designed to make the labour market more flexible in preparation for the countryâ s entry into the Free Trade Area of the Americaâ s in 2005.
The government proposes to save money by freezing public spending; freezing the salaries of state-sector employees for a period of two years; capping pensions for those who have them and scrapping the notion altogether for future employees; raising taxes which seriously affects poor families by lowering wages and raising the VAT on basic essentials; extending the working day; reducing overtime pay and extra pay for working on public holidays; limiting redundancy payouts; not recognising the minimum wage; and increasing the proportion of temporary and casual labour.
The intention is to make the working environment more precarious for the employee and more beneficial for the employer. To this end and in an attempt to destroy the unions, trade unionists are assassinated on an ever-increasing scale.
Uribe Velezâ s promises for massive social investment are a clumsy attempt to delude the public.
With more than 45 per cent of the national budget being spent to pay the international debt, at least another 25 per cent being spent on the military and security operations, more than 12 per cent being lost to corruption, and public spending frozen, anyone can see the sums donâ t add up to a set of fantastic new public services.
The referendum proposes to extend the mandate of the current government, its governors, mayors and councillors in order to push the changes through. Yet, it is an antithesis of everything the people are crying out for - for the military machine to be wound down, for the paramilitary strategy to be dissolved and for a political solution to the conflict to create peace with social justice for everyone. Itâ s not too much to ask.
We must continue to repudiate the gross human rights violations against the Colombian people by the State and its agents in the name of Uribe Velez's "democratic security" and support the 'Active Abstention' campaign against a referendum designed to make the people pay for a continuation of the abuse.
By Liz Atherton of the CPA Back
It has been caused by a package of measures the Uribe Velez regime wants to impose on the country and for which, later this year, the people are going to be asked to vote in a referendum.
The measures are being promoted by the government as a solution to many of the countryâ s social ills - a way, for example, of paying for much needed basic sanitation, health care and education in impoverished and State-abandoned parts of the country.
However, analysts who have studied the referendum proposals conclude that they are designed to erode democracy and concentrate power by reducing political participation and that, rather than increasing the scope for spending on social necessities, they will subject the people to an IMF- imposed austerity programme to pay for Uribe Velezâ s â democratic securityâ campaign, the increasing costs of the war machine, and to make the labour scenario in Colombia more attractive for foreign investors.
And so while the text of the referendum has been approved in Congress, the call throughout the country, initiated by the Central Trade Union Federation (CUT) and now echoed by scores of trade union, human rights, community, womenâ s, youth, Afro-Colombian and Indigenous groups, is to exercise their right to actively abstain from voting.
By abstaining, they want to drive home a powerful political message - not only that they disagree with the referendum, but also that they refuse to give legitimacy to the current regime.
The resistance is infuriating the government and it is working hard to convince the people of its good intentions.
In similar fashion, with propaganda wheels whirring, a glowing picture of government social investment plans for rehabilitation and consolidation zones with their massive concentration of military might and martial law for the foreseeable future was sent out to soften public opinion.
Only recently, a mass grave containing more than 50 bodies of poor campesinos disappeared by paramilitaries, some known to have been taken in January this year, was found in a rehabilitation zone in Tolima.
Another 17 campesinos from this region, including a boy of 12, remain disappeared. Uribe has said nothing about this.
In contrast, a huge amount of attention was paid to the recent bombing of an exclusive club in Bogotá, an event seized upon by the government to place the blame with the FARC without evidence, further stirring up international condemnation of the revolutionary movement and gaining support for Uribeâ s intended military solution to the conflict.
There have been waves of military crackdowns in rehabilitation zones with massive arrests among the civilian population on trumped-up charges of suspected terrorism and subversion. Raids on private homes and the offices of trade union, social and community organisations are increasingly frequent. All in the name of Uribeâ s â democratic securityâ .
With the government in talks with State-sponsored paramilitary hit squads, which are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people each month, and offering them amnesty, people are going to need more than empty promises to be convinced that the government has their best interests at heart.
Uribe Velez only needs a positive vote from six million of the 24 million registered voters in order to carry the referendum through. Determined to reach this target, he is also planning to extend the period of voting over several months.
Top of the agenda is the reform of Congress by reducing the number of members of the house by 20 per cent (Colombian regions already have fewer representatives in Congress per head of population than most other countries). They will also need a minimum number of votes in order to be elected. This arbitrary number is currently extraordinarily high and, applied in the last elections, would have excluded some senior government ministers.
The planned rationalisation will be most devastating for opposition parties and representatives of minority groups such as indigenous people. So while the government argues it is improving democracy and fighting corruption, it is clearly concentrating power in the hands of the traditional parties, closing spaces for alternative and challenging political debate and increasing corruption opportunities.
Many of the measures outlined in the referendum were set in motion as soon as Uribe Velez took office, such as the merging of the Ministry of the Interior with the Ministry of Justice.
Further plans include suppressing the Supreme Council of Judges and limiting the authority of the Constitutional Court.
Currently, for example, the Constitutional Court can contest the fact that the military are tried in military courts for human rights abuses against civilians.
This may change. The military goes out of its way to avoid its members being tried in a civil court and much prefers to wash its dirty laundry out of sight in its own tribunals.
You can see why. A military court recently dismissed the case against senior officers and soldiers in the armed forces who, in August 2000, killed six children on a school excursion and injured four others. The court accepted that the soldiers mistook them for ELN guerrillas and were just doing their job.
Ordinary people in Colombia have very little redress at State level for the constant barrage of human rights violations they face every day from paramilitaries and the security forces. And yet the referendum proposes to deny them the few voices able to officially denounce abuses by removing departmental and municipal monitoring bodies along with municipal peopleâ s representatives.
All their work will be assigned to the also merged, yet diametrically opposed, Public Prosecutorâ s and Public Defenderâ s Office, a totally unmanageable task for them given the scale of the crisis and yet another step in the process of silencing dissent.
Colombiaâ s national newspapers have been full of Uribe Velezâ s kingly claims that he is going to create millions of jobs and massively reduce unemployment. Perhaps, in his haste to liberalise the economy, his personal vision of the future, when everyone can enjoy the prospect of a nice little job in a foreign-run sweatshop, is getting the better of him.
However, rather than creating jobs, the State restructuring proposed in the referendum will add to unemployment. Not least will be the closure or fusion of the vast majority of the 300 public administration bodies which will cost the jobs of around 40,000 employees. Most will be on the streets this year.
The economic elements of the referendum are very clearly in direct response to IMF austerity impositions and are designed to make the labour market more flexible in preparation for the countryâ s entry into the Free Trade Area of the Americaâ s in 2005.
The government proposes to save money by freezing public spending; freezing the salaries of state-sector employees for a period of two years; capping pensions for those who have them and scrapping the notion altogether for future employees; raising taxes which seriously affects poor families by lowering wages and raising the VAT on basic essentials; extending the working day; reducing overtime pay and extra pay for working on public holidays; limiting redundancy payouts; not recognising the minimum wage; and increasing the proportion of temporary and casual labour.
The intention is to make the working environment more precarious for the employee and more beneficial for the employer. To this end and in an attempt to destroy the unions, trade unionists are assassinated on an ever-increasing scale.
Uribe Velezâ s promises for massive social investment are a clumsy attempt to delude the public.
With more than 45 per cent of the national budget being spent to pay the international debt, at least another 25 per cent being spent on the military and security operations, more than 12 per cent being lost to corruption, and public spending frozen, anyone can see the sums donâ t add up to a set of fantastic new public services.
The referendum proposes to extend the mandate of the current government, its governors, mayors and councillors in order to push the changes through. Yet, it is an antithesis of everything the people are crying out for - for the military machine to be wound down, for the paramilitary strategy to be dissolved and for a political solution to the conflict to create peace with social justice for everyone. Itâ s not too much to ask.
We must continue to repudiate the gross human rights violations against the Colombian people by the State and its agents in the name of Uribe Velez's "democratic security" and support the 'Active Abstention' campaign against a referendum designed to make the people pay for a continuation of the abuse.
Colombia Peace Association
Homepage:
www.colombiapeace.org
