Gustavo Petro wants to give new impetus to the Government, which seems stagnant, and has begun the political project of total peace. The president has dismissed the former Peace Commissioner, Danilo Rueda, who has not managed to successfully implement the peace agreement in 2016 nor has he made significant progress in negotiations with the FARC dissidents. His place will be taken from now on by Otty Patiño, the chief negotiator with the ELN, an old M-19 militant who has Petro’s absolute confidence.
In its day, Rueda also had it, which seemed omnipresent this year. She managed six simultaneous negotiations with armed groups and compliance with the Havana agreements. His critics argued that too much responsibility fell on her shoulders and that she often fell into improvisation. Nor are the talks going smoothly with the ELN, which 13 months after she sat at the table refuses to stop kidnapping. All this put at risk what Petro has called total peace, the maximalist idea of disarming or negotiating with the armed groups scattered throughout the country.
Its possible failure upsets the president, who in recent weeks has asked his ministers to redouble their efforts to implement the changes he has in mind. “The processes towards peace in the country will be directed by Otty Patiño, I thank Danilo for all his immense efforts,” was the brief message that Petro posted on social networks to announce his decision.
The processes towards peace in the country will be directed by Otty Patiño, I thank Danilo for all his immense efforts.
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) November 22, 2023
Senator Iván Cepeda, also in charge of peace matters, explains by phone that Rueda has faced very big challenges, especially the dialogue with the FARC structures that departed from the peace agreement, but that he has made some progress. that have served to launch the project: “He has done work in which concrete progress has been made in a very difficult situation.” At the same time, he welcomes Patiño’s arrival to office: “he has dedicated his life to the construction of peace. “I am pleased that he is in charge of this new responsibility.”
The representative of the Green Alliance party, Catherine Juvinao, a few days ago gave Rueda a political control debate in Congress. “He has proven to be an extremely inefficient official. All the indicators that should be improving due to his management are getting worse. Especially those related to the conflict, kidnappings, extortions… But in addition to that, he is an incredibly arrogant and stubborn man,” Juvinao told this newspaper.
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Rueda has had to face one crisis after another in his approach with the so-called Central General Staff (EMC), a dissident group commanded by a former FARC militant, Iván Mordisco. For a year, Mordisco and Rueda were in contact, until they agreed to start a table in October. Along the way they have faced all kinds of obstacles, such as when the Carolina Ramírez front, under the umbrella of the EMC, murdered four indigenous teenagers that it had forcibly recruited in the department of Putumayo, in the jungle, a massacre that led the Government to suspend the ceasefire agreed upon since the new year. Petro himself recently acknowledged that the installation of that table had been hasty. At this moment, after a break because they claimed to be being harassed by the army, the EMC has assured that it will return to the dialogues.
From now on, Patiño will be in charge of all these peace talks in which the Petro Government is embarking. It is a fact that he has much more experience than Danilo Rueda. He was a negotiator for the M-19 in the eighties and, like Petro, was a member of the Constituent Assembly that drafted the 1991 political charter. At 78 years old, he is a man of few words and a very fine sense of humor. At the dialogue tables with the ELN he sometimes intervenes to make very witty remarks that make the rest of those present laugh.
Talking with the ELN has also become a labyrinth for Petro, who wanted to reach a quick agreement with that guerrilla. He has not achieved it and it seems difficult for him to do so. The ELN is a harsh negotiator who does not mind stretching discussions to infinity and who does not like to have anything imposed on them. Right now that dialogue is experiencing a moment of impasse. After the kidnapping of the father of soccer player Luis Díaz, the Government has demanded that the armed group abandon this practice and release all those captured, who are estimated at just over 30. Petro wanted this to be resolved immediately, but again The ELN’s times are inscrutable and for now it has not given any sign that it is going to stop kidnapping: the guerrillas consider that it is a practice that is allowed to them in the context of the war they face against the State, although a ceasefire has been declared. the fire.
Rueda has also been unable to advance in the implementation of the agreement that was signed during the time of President Juan Manuel Santos. Rodrigo Londoño, Timochenko, the last leader of the FARC, harshly attacked him for, supposedly, not caring that former guerrillas who signed the agreement were harassed by members of the EMC. Concerned about this drift, Petro received Timochenko, who, according to sources consulted, was very critical of Rueda’s work. To fix these misunderstandings, the president ordered that the implementation depend on a specific unit and not just on Rueda directly.
Petro tries to save an issue in which he has dedicated his entire political life: peace. For some reason the motto that he displays around the world is that of Colombia, world power of life, although it is evidence that the conflict in the Colombian countryside, which produces deaths and displacement of civilians, still persists. Their commitment is that, in addition, universities reach those places devastated by war, and roads and hospitals are built. But all of this has not finished germinating strongly, and that is why it takes a turn before the end of the year. On the one hand, he recognizes that total peace was not going well and, on the other, he shows that he wants to save it at all costs. The president who makes the flag of peace does not want to stop raising it.
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