An eye witness account of the Columbian presidential election in the summer of 2022

 

An eye witness account of the Columbian presidential election in the summer of 2022

“I am pleased about the election results and hope they will be respected so that the new Colombian president can make good on promises to boost basic services and pursue a policy of ‘Total Peace’. I am glad to have had the chance to visit Colombia during the elections”.

Michelle Smith, who along with Eddie Cassidy from the Unite Executive Committee, was part of a delegation, organised by Justice for Colombia (J4C), of parliamentarians and trade unionists from Britain and Ireland who visited Colombia between 28 May and 2 June following an appeal from human rights groups and election monitoring bodies for an increased international presence during the Colombian presidential election.

 “I witnessed great enthusiasm in Bogota to vote when the polling booths opened and saw voters provide identification that included having their fingerprints taken and checked against earlier prints that are taken at birth and when seven years old”.

Michelle, an official for the Communication Managers’ Association, was also in the South American Republic to help monitor the current state of trade union and human rights along with the peace deal signed between the Colombian state and the FARC-EP in November 2016.

She admits to being unnerved to see police officers brandishing AK47’s on Bogota street corners and could not but be aware of mass impoverishment as “many people were sleeping under motorway bridges and next to supermarkets and I feared that a number had died as they were not moving.”

Even though it is believed that the official 10% rate is massively underestimated, Colombia has the highest unemployment rate in South America and between 2018 and 2022 levels of inequality rose considerably under President Ivan Duque’s rule.

Which is why Michelle was glad that Gustavo Petro was elected on 19 June with his vice-president the land defender Francia Marquez becoming the first African-Colombian women to hold the post in the new coalition government, the Historic Pact, which had earlier this year in March also won a landmark victory at the legislative elections.  “It received strong backing from young people, women, ethnic minorities, the peace movement and trade unions and social investment is part of its agenda with pledges to make decent education and healthcare more accessible to lower-income Colombians. Developing basic services and infrastructure will seek to reduce poverty. Basic sanitary conditions and clean water remain out of reach in underdeveloped regions, with rural, indigenous and African-Colombian communities particularly affected.”

If the Historic Pact are to make improvements then it is vital that peace agreements are upheld to ensure that paramilitary and guerrilla groups lay down their weapons. For almost half a century Colombia suffered a war in which upwards of 450,000 civilians lost their lives. Following extensive negotiations, which Justice for Colombia played an important role in facilitating, the Colombian government and Farc guerrilla forces agreed to cease violent conflict six years ago.

But Colombia’s former president Iván Duque abandoned this agreement as soon as he took office. The consequences have been devastating and over 1,300 social leaders and peace accord signatories have been assassinated.

“Those killed include close to 40 FENSUAGRO members whilst a number of USO (oil workers) members have also been killed, including regional official Sibares Lamprea in September. Unite has links with both unions and has repeatedly contacted Colombian, British and Irish authorities over anti-trade union violence”, states a passionate Michelle.

Whilst she was in Colombia Michelle, who is from Doncaster, met the families of some of the victims of state violence when she travelled to Puerto Asis, Putumayo to be greeted by people, many of whom were recovering from horrific injuries, “that they had battled against to make a four day journey in order to tell their stories for us to bring to the attention of others across the world. One woman spoke of how without warning the army had opened fire on a communal gathering and had killed eleven people including her husband who she tendered as he died in her arms in an hour-long struggle to stay alive”.

The raid, believed to have been conducted to force people to abandon their homes and land for repossession by large landowners, was celebrated by Duque.  Colombia’s extremely concentrated land ownership ranks among the most unequal in the world and little has been done since 2016 to change this.

Michelle also met during her time in Colombia, former Farc members, who despite constant harassment and the loss of comrades murdered by the state are continuing to make some progress in reintegrating themselves into society by developing co-operative land ventures. “They talked passionately about the Peace agreement”.

In addition, Michelle also met the British Ambassador. She was unimpressed. “When we reported on our travels and meetings and our hopes for the future he just kept asking us what we were going to do?”

In response, the delegation was quite clear that following the signing of a UK trade agreement with Colombia, Peru and Ecuador in 2019 they want the UK, which backed the 2016 Peace Agreement, to include mechanisms to ensure that Colombia makes concrete improvements on Human Rights.

In his inaugural speech, Petro promised his incoming government will bring “true and definitive peace” to Colombia. To do this, he invited historic political opponents to the table to reach a common agreement through which both guerrilla and paramilitary forces will lay down their arms.

Soon after the last active guerrilla force in Colombia, the ELN requested fresh negotiations with the government to lay down their arms. This was followed by a joint letter by dozens of right wing paramilitary forces and drug/criminal cartels who called for a ceasefire to negotiate terms for peace. 

“I am cautiously hopefully that the election of Petro and his new peace process will work out so that he can introduce his necessary social reforms. I’d like to think we helped in some small way by visiting Colombia and I am glad I went. Justice for Columbia are well organised and it was certainly no holiday and it takes a bit of time when you get home to process everything you have witnessed,” said Michelle who will now be seeking to get more Unite branches to affiliate to Justice for Colombia and who is willing to speak at trade union and labour meetings about what she witnessed whilst in South America.