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With Uribe's triumph Colombia gets the president it needed


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By Claudio Campuzano
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

May 29, 2002

Finally Colombia is going to have a president feared by the grandly titled Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC), the collection of terrorist bandits that, while they live off kidnapping, robbery, extortion and their mercenary activities for the drug cartels, have arrogated for themselves the representation of the Colombian people.

How much the FARC fear Alvaro Uribe, chosen Sunday as the new president of Colombia that will take office August 7, is evident by the threats with which they tried to stop Colombians from voting for him.

"For every Uribe vote, there will be a grave," is the slogan that the FARC spread among the people in the area they dominate, according to a council member of one of the frightened towns. It's a miracle that, even in the face of such threats, almost one-half of registered Colombians went to the polls to express their repudiation of the FARC. And there is a lot to repudiate.

Since they were born almost four decades ago as enthusiastic messengers of Castro-Communism, the tropical variety of the brutal Stalinism that prevailed in the Soviet Union, the FARC took a road that carried them to be the South American version of the infamous Cambodian Khmer Rouge, for whom violence was both means and end.

Nobody can answer the question of how do the FARC plan to govern Colombia if the took power-not even the members of the Socialist International that graciously harbor these terrorists as their comrades-for the simple reason that their plan is nothing more than reaching power to institutionalize their banditry.

Before Uribe, since the two-voting-round exists no Colombian president has been victorious in the first round. This should be enough for confirming in the rest of the world that his election represents the will of a people that are tired of half-way measures in the fight against the FARC. But some alarming comments can be seen in the American and European press, which express anxieties for the possibility that the Uribe government would launch a decisive campaign to fight barbaric terrorism -which augurs that it might not receive the international support it needs to win this fight.

After headlining its story "Hard-Liner Elected in Colombia With a Mandate to Crush Rebels," the New York went on to wring its hands over reports that "human rights groups warn that Mr. Uribe's plans could lead to increased abuses that would mostly befall poor villagers who live in the areas where the fighting often takes place," as if the "poor villagers" were not now the most affected by the FARC's criminal actions.

The Washington Post also headlined its report on Uribe's victory with "Colombia Elects a Hard-liner on Fighting Rebels," as if in the fight against terrorists whose intention is to destroy a country there could be a distinction between a "hard line" and a "soft line." Perhaps the United States should follow a "soft line" in its fight against terrorism? It looks as if this is what the Post thinks when it says that Uribe's victory "anointed a new partner for Washington, one whose security-first approach fits more naturally with the Bush administration's war on terrorism than the peace policy favored by the current president, AndrŽs Pastrana . . ." Isn't "failed" missing in that sentence before "peace policy?"

The French daily Le Monde points out that "53 percent of voters approved his program of strengthening the fight against the guerrilla," and then goes on to dismiss Uribe as a "50-year-ol man with the face of a boy genius and the countenance of a theology student that has forged for himself an image of honesty and firmness", adding that "Colombians have put in power an austere and distant character with no sense of humor," as if enumerating his lack of virtues to be another negotiator with Le Monde's comrades. Indeed, having your father assassinated by the FARC, as was Uribe's father, puts a damper on you sense of humor about terrorists.

With outgoing president AndrŽs Pastrana Colombians already gave a chance to the idea of negotiating peace, and the only outcome was that the FARC took advantage of the period of negotiations to strengthen itself. Having experienced this failure, Colombians have now chosen a president that believes barbarism can only be defeated by force. Uribe goes through the motions of what is expected from a new president when he says he will seek international mediation and will be ready for negotiations if the FARC agree to hard conditions: a cease-fire and the end to all terrorist activities. Few, if any, Colombians believe the solution will come from negotiations..

Many voted for Uribe fully knowing that his victory could unleash even greater violence before things improve. But they want, once and for all, a Colombia that is not a country kidnapped and tortured by the FARC.

Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com

May 29, 2002



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