Pastrana brings hope to battered Colombia

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): Colombian President-elect Andres Pastrana does not even take office until Aug. 7, but he has already stunned Colombians by going to meet the leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's biggest guerrilla group.

Early this month, while Colombians thought Pastrana was in France for the World Cup final, he was walking through the rain forest with his campaign chief, one security man and a cameraman, on his way to a secret rendezvous with legendary FARC leaders Manuel 'Sureshot' Marulanda and Jorge Briceno. He came out with an agreement to demilitarize five towns in the south of Colombia, and a promise to start peace talks within 90 days of his inauguration.

It unleashed a surge of optimism among Colombians who have been living at the ragged edge of despair. "These are hugely positive developments for the country," said Father Jorge Martinez of the National Conciliation Council, and United Nations Secretary- General Kofi Annan sent Pastrana a personal message offering UN help in ending the war.

Since then, Colombian business, social and church leaders have held a meeting in Germany with the country's second-largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN). Not much more can happen until Pastrana is actually in office, but many of the 40 million Colombians are beginning to wonder if he might actually be the one to lead them out of the wilderness.

It's the least he could do, since he bears such a large responsibility for getting them into their present mess. In the previous presidential election, in 1994, Pastrana was running neck- and-neck with Liberal Party leader Ernesto Samper three days before the election when he was given a copy of a taped phone conversation in which a leading Cali drug trafficker discussed a US$6 million contribution to Samper's campaign.

Pastrana sat on the evidence, lost the election by a mere 100,000 votes -- and then called a press conference and played the tape four days later. It was an act of political suicide, proving him a bad loser and a political idiot at the same time. Samper certainly was in the pocket of the drug cartels (the United States eventually even revoked his visa), but Pastrana was virtually hounded out of the country, spending the next three years at the United Nations University in Tokyo and as a UN adviser in Jordan.

Meanwhile, President Samper spent his whole term fighting off attempts to get him on drugs-related corruption charges, and government hiring and spending choices were totally subordinated to his quest for allies who could help him avoid indictment or impeachment. He succeeded, but at enormous cost to Colombia.

"(Samper) is a political genius," said economic consultant Francisco Mejia last year. "But it doesn't matter. He doesn't have credibility, nobody trusts him, and without that, you can't really run a country."

Economic growth in Colombia, over 5 percent in 1994, was down to 1.5 percent by last year. The foreign debt doubled during Samper's term, as did the unemployment rate. Government spending (of mostly borrowed money) soared from 20 percent to 33 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, but ordinary Colombians didn't benefit.

On the contrary. Law and order collapsed, and the murder rate soared until it was almost 10 times that of the United States. Kidnapping became such big business that 70 percent of all the world's kidnappings now happen in Colombia, so foreign investors fled. Worst of all, the guerrillas and the paramilitaries took over the rural areas.

The nominally Marxist FARC and ELN expanded their control to 40 percent of Colombia's territory: it is now hard to drive far from the main cities of Bogota, Cali or Medellin without running into one of their roadblocks. The guerrillas are nominally Marxist, but have also become major financial powers with large revenue- producing operations in drug-trafficking and kidnapping: FARC's turnover last year was almost $500 million.

Even worse are the paramilitaries that work for the big land- owners, generally with army connivance. The 'headcutters' -- named after their favorite method of execution -- were responsible for 85 percent of last year's 186 officially acknowledged 'massacres' of peasants in Colombia (accounting for 1,420 deaths), compared to only 15 percent for the army and the guerrillas combined. Trapped between these monstrous forces, close to two million Colombians have become internal refugees in their own country.

"The next president is going to find a country in complete ruins," said former justice minister Enrique Parejo before last month's election. "It has to be rebuilt again from scratch." Is Andres Pastrana really up to the job?

Pastrana, the wealthy son of a former Conservative president of Colombia (Misael Pastrana, 1970-1974), is an unlikely candidate for radical reformer. But as a youth he was actually a long-haired rebel collecting money for the poor (or at least a part-time rebel -- he managed to do a law degree at the same time). He is still only 44, and he is showing an unexpected flair for dramatic action.

Just achieving peace with the guerrillas will not be easy, for a settlement must preserve their business interests. "They are all bad guys," explains Professor Mauricio Rubio of the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota. "The FARC does not want to be ministers. It has far too much money now to be interested in agrarian reform."

Despite major difficulties, the dialog with both FARC and ELN has begun. Pastrana makes encouraging statements about closing down the paramilitaries, cutting taxes and raising social spending.

He faces a Congress dominated by his Liberal opponents, and no human being could turn the Colombian nightmare around in just one or two years, but he is looking better by the moment.