Presidential candidates in Colombia would restart negotiations with the ELN

On the way to the presidential elections on Sunday, the favorite candidates once again put peace at the center of the debate, this time to commit to restarting negotiations with the ELN, the last recognized guerrilla group in Colombia and expanding after the last failure of the talks.

“We must recover the path we have retraced, comply with the agreements already signed by the State”, leftist Gustavo Petro, who leads all the polls, proposed during a meeting between presidential candidates, organized by the Prisa Media media alliance.

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Petro was referring to the peace talks that President Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) began in Cuba and that his successor Iván Duque broke after the brutal attack on a Police school that left twenty dead and was claimed by that guerrilla in early 2019.

Without closing the door to talks, Federico Gutiérrez, second in voting intention, made any negotiation subject to the National Liberation Army (THE N) accept “an indefinite unilateral ceasefire, stop drug trafficking, extortion and stop killing police and soldiers.”

The armed organization declared a ceasefire to provide “tranquility” during the days prior to the elections of May 29.

“If they show that desire for peace, when the presidency wins we will sit down to define some terms,” anticipated Gutiérrez, a candidate for a coalition of forces related to the ruling party.

After the talks were broken, Duque then demanded that Cuba capture and hand over the negotiating team of the THE N, which led to a deterioration of diplomatic relations between the two countries in the face of Havana’s refusal, which appealed to the protocols signed by the parties to guarantee the return of the rebels to their country if the peace process failed. Norway was the guarantor of those agreements.

Sergio Fajardo, professor of mathematics and who is running for the presidency for the second time with a center alliance, declared himself “willing to lead” a peace process with the THE N if it shows what its “real disposition” is and under the premise that “what is signed is signed”, alluding to those international protocols.

But Gutiérrez questions his rivals: “It is very easy for a diplomat, in an embassy drinking whiskey on a sofa, with air conditioning, to talk about fulfilling what is on paper.”

At the time of the most recent negotiation, the THE N It had some 1,800 combatants, a number that today amounts to 2,500 according to official figures and feeds an extensive support network in urban points, especially on the border with Venezuela and the Pacific.

FARC and drug traffickers

Petro, Gutiérrez and Fajardo validate the agreement that disarmed the powerful FARC guerrilla in 2017, but they distance themselves on how to confront the narco that escalates the violence in the country with organizations such as the Clan del Golfo and the dissidents that separated from the historic covenant.

While Gutiérrez prioritizes “authority and territorial control” to deliver military and financial blows to these organizations, Petro plans to weaken them “by taking away their political power, power over the population” and offering them an unprecedented “policy of collective submission” to justice.

On his side, Fajardo is committed to a “prevention policy” of recruitment and strengthening of justice in the territories.

The elections Sunday will take place in the midst of a resurgence of violence that plagues some 290 of more than 1,100 municipalities in the country, according to the Ombudsman.

Businessman Rodolfo Hernández (77), absent from the debates due to his campaign decision and who is fighting Gutiérrez for passage to the second round, proposes directly including the THE N within the agreements of the FARC without the mediation of a negotiation. His adoptive daughter was kidnapped in 2004 by the THE N and missing ever since.

Emerged in 1964 in the heat of the Cuban Revolution, the THE N It operates by financing itself mainly from drug trafficking and before the Santos mandate it had held unsuccessful talks with the governments of César Gaviria (1990-1994), Ernesto Samper (1994-1998), Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002) and Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010). .

Colombiathe main exporter of cocaine in the world, is experiencing an intense conflict that in more than half a century has confronted guerrillas, paramilitaries, drug traffickers and state agents, leaving more than nine million victims, most of them displaced.

Source: Elcomercio

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