Iván Duque is the new president of Colombia
Rights — di Emanuele Bompan
Iván Duque was elected president of Colombia following the elections of 17 June. A continuity victory that should not jeopardise the peace process — though doubts remain.
Iván Duque is the new president of Colombia
Iván Duque was elected president of Colombia following the elections of 17 June. A continuity victory that should not jeopardise the peace process — though doubts remain.
The candidate of the Centro Democrático party Iván Duque, political protégé of former conservative president Álvaro Uribe, was elected on Sunday 17 June as the new president of Colombia, after securing a comfortable victory over former guerrilla fighter Gustavo Petro in the second round of the elections.
In a decisive duel over the peace process seeking to end half a century of war, Duque obtained 53.97 per cent of the support against 41.80 per cent of votes counted, according to the Colombian electoral authority. Left-wing candidate Petro conceded defeat just minutes after the electoral authority recognised Duque as the new president.
Con humildad y con honor quiero decirle al pueblo colombiano que voy a entregar todas mis energías por unir a nuestro país. No más divisiones. Queremos un país con todos y para todos. #GraciasColombia🇨🇴
At 41, Duque is the youngest president elected in Colombia since 1872 and the most voted for in the country's history, with more than 10 million votes. Colombians favoured Duque, who promises to modify the peace agreement signed in 2016 that disarmed the former guerrilla forces of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) and to strengthen the conditions for the ongoing talks with the rebels of the National Liberation Army (Eln), which remains underground.
Este será el gobierno que lleve a toda Colombia el emprendimiento porque queremos hacer el país de las micro, pequeñas, medianas y grandes empresas. #GraciasColombia 🇨🇴
Is the peace process with the guerrillas at risk?
According to the High Commissioner for Peace of the Colombian government, Rodrigo Rivera, the peace process is set to last. "The roots are solid. This process will take 15 years to implement, meaning there will be five Colombian presidents who will need to be committed in their leadership to the implementation up to the year 2031."
The implication is clear: it will not be Duque who causes the process to collapse. There will certainly be adjustments to the peace agreement — Duque made this a cornerstone of his electoral campaign — particularly on the issue of justice, calling for the prosecution of some Farc commanders, and on the resumption of coca eradication. But the foundations of the agreement are solid and protected by the international community, particularly by Europe.
"At this stage we are building the foundations, creating the institutions, allocating budget resources, completing the disarmament and the handover of all the war materiel that the Farc held," Rivera continues. A sign that, in the view of the Bogotá elites, the capital of the country, the process of reintegrating the 13,000 Farc combatants — men and women alike — is set to endure, keeping the confrontation within the political arena rather than the military one. Furthermore, negotiations with the National Liberation Army, the other communist-environmentalist guerrilla organisation, are progressing swiftly. "They are very promising," Rivera comments.
Fundamental to preventing the collapse of the peace agreement will be the agrarian reform and the development cooperation projects that will serve to retrain guerrilla fighters as farmers and livestock breeders, supporting the development of all the impoverished areas — more than 170 municipalities, around 18 per cent of the country — brought to their knees by the extremely long and bloody conflict. Land and infrastructure, which will need to accompany the plan to substitute and eradicate illicit crops, creating alternative productive projects for around 70,000 farming families who have committed to this policy.
Cautious optimism — very cautious — is instead expressed by the inhabitants and local politicians of the rural conflict areas, where Duque's election has partly erased the sense of hope generated by the first two years of work towards peace. The mayor of La Hormiga, one of the main centres of Putumayo, where Petro won around 70 per cent of the vote, remains uncertain about how the agreement will develop. "The municipality does not trust the representatives of Centro Democrático, because they depend on former president Uribe. During his presidency this region was one of the most affected by paramilitarism, responsible for atrocious massacres such as those of El Tigre and El Placer, where dozens of innocent people were killed. This brings anxiety and uncertainty. We hope it will be possible to continue consolidating peace."
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Rain falls softly on the corrugated iron roof of the small library covered in the faces of revolutionary heroes. William Macías Peña, code name "Robinson", is one of the local Farc commanders, responsible for the Territorial Space for Training and Reintegration of La Carmelita, in the municipality of Puerto Asís, Putumayo. "Around 350 combatants have found refuge here, a number that is growing given the increase in comrades returning to this territorial space."
La Carmelita is one of the spaces where the 13,000 guerrillas are now concentrated. Around 500 have defected, returning to the bush and exploiting the support of criminal organisations. "They are traitors," Robinson confirms. "The Farc have given their word and we will continue to pursue peace, at any cost, even against those who will seek to sabotage the agreement. On this there is not a shadow of a doubt." But off the record, there are many who harbour doubts about what will really happen now under the government of president-elect Duque. Others would be ready to defect and return underground rather than risk imprisonment or fail to obtain the benefits negotiated through the ceasefire.
Victims of insecurity
Another complex knot is that of transitional justice — the process of documenting the atrocities committed, without however convicting combatants on all sides under the existing law. The Colombian armed conflict has affected 8,650,169 people to date, according to the Registro único de víctimas. They represent 17 per cent of the country's entire population. As many as 220,000 people have been killed or murdered since 1958, almost all of them civilians. Only a small minority of these victims has received compensation from the government, particularly for the violence perpetrated by the army or by the paramilitary groups formed to defeat the guerrillas.
Numerous people interviewed in Putumayo lamented the lack of recognition and compensation from the state. Truth is a complex process, difficult to document given the inextricable complexity of the conflict and the many — too many — political and economic interests still at play, encompassing coca, oil, territorial control, and the trafficking of arms and people. And now the victims fear that the Duque government will block the work begun by the Jep, the peace tribunal, thereby halting the compensation process.
The country is certainly not pacified. Large areas remain under the control of drug traffickers. When the Farc were gathered together for disarmament, the state did little to maintain control over those territories. These regions were therefore seized by groups devoted to drug trafficking. "Contradicting the peace agreement, this has slowed down point 4, the one on the substitution of coca cultivation," Robinson explains. To the point where the Mexican cartels themselves, such as the Sinaloa cartel, in league with some Farc dissidents such as El Guacho, have taken control of territories left unguarded in Nariño and Putumayo and along the country's eastern border. In cities such as Medellín, various areas remain outside state control, with gangs, former paramilitaries and drug traffickers continuing to carry out murders and extort money from the city's poorest residents.
The curse of coca in Colombia
The issue of coca cultivation remains central to advancing the peace process. Over the past two years, cocaine production has returned to growth. In 2012, the area covered by coca crops in Colombia was 78,000 hectares, capable of producing 165 tonnes. In 2017, the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) recorded a significant increase in that area, to around 230,000 hectares, with cocaine production reaching 900 tonnes. A record figure, despite the Peace Agreement providing for an end to the cultivation of the well-known alkaloid. Crops that in many cases sustain narcos and rebels, making the pacification of the country more difficult.
What are the reasons for the increase in cultivation? "First of all, the cash compensation for those who stop growing coca has pushed many farmers to convert their crops in the hope of receiving subsidies, while ignoring the fact that the state will only compensate those who were growing coca before the peace agreement," explains Mario Cabal, head of development projects at the Italian NGO Cisp. "Furthermore, those who were growing coca earn more by continuing to grow it," he adds. Which is why in provinces such as Putumayo it is easy to come across cocalero plantations. "The state spends 60 million pesos (18,000 euros, ed.) per hectare sprayed with glyphosate," says Nico, a coca grower with land near the Ecuadorian border. "This money should be given to us cocaleros, as real compensation for replacing coca crops. Instead, the state pays out just over 9 million pesos (2,700 euros). At these rates, the substitution process — which I agreed to — doesn't work. So I keep growing coca."
Meanwhile, Juan Manuel Santos's government rightly abandoned aerial glyphosate spraying on health grounds. This brought the destruction of plantations to a halt — a point widely used by Duque during the election campaign.
According to Robinson, "the government is acting too slowly, so crop substitution is failing. There are no real projects from the government showing they have the will to move forward, although we understand it isn't easy. We made a compromise; they need to do the same."
"To defeat coca, it is essential to support the first point of the agreement with comprehensive rural development," Mario Cabal explains further, noting that through Cisp he is implementing a project funded by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, which has a strong presence in the country. "We need to draw up bottom-up development plans that include everyone, with direct community participation in decision-making. Land management is the key. Instead of leaving young people at the mercy of the narcos or coca, we need to generate long-term economic development by creating territorial development plans." Processed products from agriculture that offers an alternative to coca — such as cocoa, chilli pepper, exotic fruit — along with the creation of cultural districts and social development initiatives for farmers and former FARC combatants, are among the plans that Italy will develop here in Putumayo over the next three years. In the hope that the peace process will be preserved.