If the government of Gustavo Petro has made something clear in these 10 months in office, it is his commitment to ending the years of armed conflict and violence in the country through dialogue. From speech of possession until the recently approved National Development Plan, has conveyed to us the essence of his commitment: to discuss how not to kill each other, to seek common paths and to resolve the old forms of violence and those that arose or changed due to non-compliance with peace processes. The ultimate goal, he declares, is to protect life and ensure that dignified living is at the center of public policy. And one step to achieve the above is to provide the opportunity for all violent actors to make a transition towards the Social State of Law, through negotiations or “socio-legal conversations”, depending on whether the group is considered a rebel or a criminal structure. high impact
These dialogues began to be more publicized from the moment the president sanctioned the legal framework of the so-called total peace. The negotiation table with the ELN was reactivated. Buenaventura was presented as a peace laboratory due to the exploding phase of dialogues and the truce between the Los Espartanos and Los Shottas gangs. The future installation of a talks table with the so-called Central General Staff and an urban peace pilot in the Aburrá Valley was announced. At least 22 armed groups They announced their interest in joining total peace as the Clan del Golfo, the Segunda Marquetalia, the Pachencas or the Rastrojos Costeños. Also, at the beginning of the year, the president announced the agreement of a bilateral cessation with five organizations. This avalanche of announcements provoked a wide spectrum of responses among citizens: from illusion, hope and expectations, to skepticism, mistrust and pessimism.
The accumulation of various unfavorable facts is tilting the balance towards the negative side, especially since it is increasingly clear that the Government has not carried out the necessary planning to win this huge bet. Desire, a vote of confidence, “it is always preferable to try rather than do nothing” is not enough: it is essential that the Government demonstrate that it knows what it is doing and that the situation is not getting out of hand. Because so far some facts show the opposite.
For example, the ELN denied the president by stating that they had not agreed to a bilateral ceasefire and attributed the recent attack on members of the Police in Tibú. Due to an attack on the Public Force, the president declared the declared the end of the layoff with the Clan del Golfo and this week announced the partial suspension of the ceasefire with the Central General Staff after learning that a front of this group murdered four minors who had been forcibly recruited. In Buenaventura the truce was broken and violent acts have increased.
Of course, the government is not the one who recruits or who carries out the attacks, but it is the one who has set the goal that they cease through total peace. despite some positive impactsUnfortunately, in that objective it is not giving the expected results. Among the reasons, we can consider at least four major failures.
The first is the apparent lack of knowledge or incomplete information about the groups with which dialogue is taking place. For example, the president himself has said that he doubts whether the ELN leaders sitting at the negotiating table really rule the group. Experts in organized crime from Medellín question the innocence of the government when thinking that it is enough to ask for peace for the groups to obey, without clarity in the incentives that the members of these organizations have to enter into a process of submission: since many do not have pending with the justice, why would they want to submit?
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The second is that the legalization of the drug markets, especially cocaine and cannabis, is still not central to this conversation. Various high-impact criminal groups have control over one or several points in the production chain and this generates high income for them. Continuing to wait for the world to be “ready” for the legalization of cocaine takes us away from the objective: a total peace without regulation of the drug markets is an incomplete and weak peace.
The third is the bad communication that has existed from the Government. Forms are key: a negotiation is essentially communication, both towards the counterparty and towards the public. It is true that, because these are delicate issues that require the construction of credibility between interlocutors, as citizens we cannot know the entire content of the negotiations. However, Danilo Rueda has failed to convey security, confidence and clarity to us. And in the vertigo that total peace is producing, this is essential. In fact, the statements and terms that it has been using lately make us doubt whether this government has any limits with the armed groups or anything goes to achieve that idea of total peace.
Lastly, there is a perceived lack of institutional capacity. Does the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace have the capacity to address and sustain all the conversations it is starting? Why start them with criminal groups when the subjugation law hasn’t even begun to be discussed? Why not coordinate with other government offices to offer services in Buenaventura while this law is approved? As of today, there is no official tool to subdue these groups and even the bill’s rapporteur, Ariel Avila, accepts the mistakes and makes an urgent call for this law to be approved soon, before it arrives too late in places like Buenaventura. That is why it is vital that those who lead total peace be clear about the capacity of the State to respond to all these dialogues and to all the expectations they are generating.
These four failures have weakened the government’s position both in negotiations and among public opinion. And this is the highest cost that one can pay in a complex dialogue process.
Gustavo Petro has not been the only president to try negotiated solutions. Each one has had to face the particular challenges of each context, and Petro received a country with a delicate security situation, groups that continue to try to fill gaps, and a peace process that was left lame and weakened. He, too, is challenged to negotiate from the left: politically, that can automatically make him perceived as weaker on security. In addition, he still carries the stigma of having belonged to a guerrilla group, which the opposition uses to say that he wants to benefit the armed groups. To top it off, he has competition in the region from leaders who promote a strong hand against criminals, a strategy that is increasing in value in several countries thanks especially to the projection of an authoritarian leader like Nayib Bukele from El Salvador.
All this only makes it more necessary for the Government to show that total peace is more than a desire and that they know what they are doing, because the line of Colombian bukeles is growing, willing to capitalize on any mistake. If the hope for full peace begins to turn to disappointment, there will be more space and support for them. Instead, what is necessary is to cement the desire with dimensioned, pragmatic plans, attached to the knowledge of the territory and decisive with the issues raised by the citizenry: that they do have a chance to function.
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