Communist
25th April 2009, 15:07
sent by portside . org
================================================== ===
The Polo Democratico Flatters to Deceive: Divisions and
Clientelism Threaten to Ruin the Left's Big Opportunity
* Colombian right shows rare signs of fallibility under
President Uribe
* Public unrest with government corruption offers
glimmer of hope for leftists
* Factionalism within Polo Democratico looks set to
undermine 2010 election hopes
* Party shoots itself in the foot with links to
clientelism in Bogota
Council on Hemispheric Affairs
by Rachel Godfrey Wood
April 24, 2009
http://www.coha.org/2009/04/the-polo-democratico-flatters-to-deceive-divisions-and-clientelism-threaten-to-ruin-the-lefts-big-opportunity/
Colombia, it has often been said, has experienced so
many attempted revolutions that it has become a
profoundly conservative country. Who, after the
violence that followed Jorge Eliecer Gaitan's murder,
would have predicted that 50 years later, the country
would be the only one in the continent never to have
had an openly "left-wing" government? Or that the
conservative status quo could have been preserved for
so long without even requiring a military dictatorship?
Yes, leftist political hopes have often been
extinguished by repression (for example, the
extermination of the Union Patriótica in the 1980s),
and discouraged by the media, but not necessarily any
more so than in other countries on the continent, where
both moderate and radical left wingers have overcome
media bias and recovered from traumatic episodes to win
power. By contrast, Colombia's democratic left had not
registered a significant electoral result until 2006,
and even then was comfortably beaten by Alvaro Uribe
Velez.
Surveys repeatedly show that Colombians differ
profoundly from their compatriots in other countries in
their opinions on a broad range of issues, displaying a
genuine distrust of Hugo Chávez and, at times, an
unwarranted positive view of the United States'
regional role and of the beneficial potential of free
trade. While Colombia's bad human rights record makes
it a honey pot for left-leaning NGOs and emancipated
journalists, issues regularly emphasized outside
Colombia (such as the almost routine assassination of
trade unionists) rarely make it onto the average
Colombian's political radar.
An Opening, if not an Invitation
Despite this, Colombia's political left finds itself
with an unprecedented opportunity to increase its
political visibility, and maybe even challenge for
power. Following successful military operations to
assassinate FARC commander Raul Reyes and rescue high
profile hostages, Uribe's approval ratings had climbed
to 90 percent in 2008, a staggering achievement for any
president. In the second half of that year, though, a
series of scandals and problems put his re-election in
doubt. First, the "false positives" scandal revealed
what many had known for years: the government policy of
maintaining quotas for the murder of enemy combatants
creates morally perverse incentives, leading commanders
to kill innocent people and present them as such
"combatants". True to form, Uribe's teflon-esque
popularity was only marginally dampened by the scandal.
In November, however, the social calamity of the
pyramid/money laundering schemes finally managed to
achieve something that the Polo Democrático, the left-
leaning opposition party, failed to do in 5 years:
motivate the public into acts of spontaneous, popular
opposition to the government.
At a broader level, the unfettered capitalism favored
by Uribe has been dealt a massive blow by the
international financial crisis, and Colombia's five
years of high economic growth are coming to an end.
Despite insistences from the government and private
sector that the country is in a position to ride out
the crisis, Colombia's projected growth for 2009 is
continually being downgraded by analysts. It is now
recognized that the country is entering into a full-
blown recession, and this has forced the government to
nervously retreat from its neo-liberal policies by
proposing increased public spending to fend off the
crisis. Moreover, the weakening of the FARC may
ironically lower Uribe's silhouette in the long term,
as it will allow the Colombian electorate to consider
other factors which may negatively affect the country.
Finally, it should never be forgotten that Colombia has
a massive abstention rate, meaning a significant number
of people, mainly from the lower sectors of society,
remain uncommitted to Uribe's political project and his
personal fate. Despite all this, Uribe remains
exceptionally popular for a president who has been in
power for six years. Undoubtedly, Uribe, or one of his
allies, remains the favorite to win the 2010 elections,
but the competition will be far keener that it has in
recent years.
Work to be Done
The fact that the left struggles to make headway in
Colombia does not, of course, mean that it has little
to offer. Colombia is one of the most unequal countries
in a very unequal continent, has a legacy of human
rights abuses, and is blindly committed to self-
defeating drug prohibition policies. Theoretically, a
leftist party would be able to bring an end to the
barbarity of "false positives" and other state-related
human rights abuses. Beyond this, a left-wing
government would be able to void one of the main taboos
of the right, by pursuing an international campaign in
favor of the legalization of drugs, with the explicit
intention of targeting all of the country's illegal
armed actors. The left needs a central theme: to press
forward with a major land reform program in order to
expropriate land from the ever powerful drugs mafias,
and return it to smallholder peasants and displaced
people. It needs to move towards the universalization
of the country's health service to break the link
between individual earnings and quality of healthcare.
Finally, the Polo needs to get to grips with a key
issue where the right really has little to offer: the
question of how developing countries can articulate a
model which looks after the needs and desires of their
citizens, without simply locking themselves into the
environmentally unsustainable growth experienced by
China, India, and Brazil.
The Polo's Three Factions
At the very time that the left should be seizing the
national agenda by focusing on these long neglected
issues and preparing for the 2010 elections, it seems
more content to tear itself apart. The Polo has divided
into three feuding factions: the bureaucratic left of
Samuel Moreno's alarmingly clientelistic administration
in Bogotá, the radical left represented by people like
Senator Jorge Robledo, and the pragmatic and
conciliatory left of former M19 guerrillero Senator
Gustavo Petro and former Mayor of Bogota Luis Eduardo
Garzón. Between the three of them, these factions seem
poised to squander the left's big chance.
Divided Over Election Strategies: Insults fly as Petro
Leaves
After attaining the largest ever vote for a leftist
party in Colombia's history in 2006 (2.6 million), the
Polo Democrático faced many dilemmas, all of which have
manifested in a highly public discussion over electoral
strategy: whether to ally with other anti-Uribista
forces to gain power, or go it alone and emphasize
ideological coherence. The willingness of Petro and
Garzón to ally with the Liberal Party and other
"independent" political figures enraged the majority of
the Polo, led by former presidential candidate Carlos
Gaviria and Senator Jorge Robledo. They accuse Petro
and Garzón of abandoning their principles, and
shamelessly adopting Uribe's policies just to make
themselves more electable. They reject the possibility
of an alliance with Liberal President Cesar Gaviria, a
man who, after all, was the harbinger of neo-liberalism
in Colombia.
While such arguments may go down well among the Polo's
rank and file, they do not necessarily respond to the
reality of Colombia's political culture. Despite the
Polo's rise in the last few years, only its most
hardened supporters believe it is capable of defeating
Uribe on its own. The choice for the Polo is between
simply remaining an opposition party, and seriously
seeking to govern the country. Moreover, it is
insulting to suggest that a man like Petro, who has
dedicated a large portion of his political career to
exposing links between mainstream politicians and
paramilitary violence, simply lacks principles. Robledo
believes that the Polo would, by allying with more
centrist elements, lose its ideological edge, but does
this mean that refusing alliances, and remaining in
perpetual opposition, would really be a better way of
improving society? While people like Cesar Gaviria may
be neo-liberals, they also share similar ideas on the
central issues like drug policy, something which the
Polo could look to take advantage of.
On March 30, Petro made the entirely predictable
decision to leave the party. After months of
criticizing the Polo leadership, his exit did not shock
anyone, and neither did his parting shot, in which he
accused the party of being governed by a "clientelist-
extremist" alliance. He has announced a plan to build a
coalition with the Liberal Party and independently
minded progressive candidates including the eccentric
former Mayor of Bogotá, Antanas Mockus, former Mayor of
Medellin, Sergio Fajardo, and ex-FARC captive Ingrid
Betancourt. Petro proclaims that the party will focus
primarily on preventing Uribe's reelection, and
"getting Colombia out of the war." It is expected that
other Polo "moderates" like Lucho Garzón and Maria Emma
MejÃ*a will follow Petro out of the party, leaving
behind a more ideologically coherent but far less
electable political grouping.
The Democratic Left and the Insurgency
The Polo's divisions go far beyond a debate over
election strategy. The biggest point of contention is
that of the party's policy towards the Armed
Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC). If one had to
pinpoint one over-riding explanation for the weakness
of Colombia's left, it would surely be the problems
posed by the armed insurgency. Historically, the
Colombian electorate has often associated leftist
politicians and activists with the armed leftist
insurgents, a view also held by the rightwing
vigilantes who repeatedly have sought to link the Polo
with political violence. The Polo, however, has sought
to prevent any such illegal association from damaging
its reputation, and explicitly condemns all forms of
political violence, most notably FARC's recent massacre
of the indigenous Awa in Nariño. In some regions it is
clear that the Polo has indeed distanced themselves
from the FARC in the eyes of the public, as can be seen
by Uribe's vain attempts to tarnish Samuel Moreno's
campaign to be Mayor of Bogotá.
Petro, however, believes that the Polo have still
failed to sufficiently clarify their opposition to the
FARC in terms of concrete proposals. Petro believes
that Polo's wholehearted commitment to negotiations
with the FARC is outdated, as it fails to respond to
the reality that the FARC has historically used
negotiations as a different wing of the armed struggle,
rather than as an alternative to it. It seems unlikely
that the population at large will permit a return to
the days of negotiation, when the FARC failed to
participate in good faith and used the demilitarized
zone to intensify the cultivation of coca and
kidnappings. Recently, the proposal of negotiations has
borne more fruit, in the form of the liberations of 6
hostages in an action organized by controversial
Liberal Party Senator Piedad Cordoba. At the time of
writing, it seems increasingly likely that the FARC
will release one of their longest-held hostages, Pablo
Emilio Moncayo. Despite the joy aroused by these
actions, it is unclear whether they represent a genuine
desire for peace. Following the events of last year,
the FARC is in need of political breathing space, and
such actions have not been accompanied by any change in
its behaviour. In the last few months, it has been
guilty of "politics as usual", including the
assassination of the Awa and bombing of Villavicencio's
water supply.
As Petro forcefully argues, how can you hold up
diplomacy as the best solution when you know that the
other side only sees negotiations as an extension of
the military struggle? If there does come a point when
negotiations resume, it must be explicitly clear that
any discussions with the FARC or humanitarian agreement
must be an alternative to armed violence, rather than a
compliment to it. The issue has been exploited by
Uribe, who recently has called for a "cross-party
consensus against the FARC," including even "some of my
most vehement critics." Many in the Polo will
presumably see this as an attempt to further divide
them, and they may be right, but the Polo could gain a
lot by recognizing the success of Uribe's struggle
against the FARC whilst vociferously condemning him on
other issues. They should realize that the FARC has
only damaged Colombia's left, and that treating it with
kid gloves only weakens the reputation of their own
political project.
Bureaucracy and Clientelism in Bogotá
Most alarmingly of all, the Polo seems to be
squandering its only opportunity to put its political
proposals into practice. Samuel Moreno's mayorship in
Bogotá - the second most important position in the
country - has become a byword for the type of
clientelism and traditional politics that the Polo was
supposed to be the antithesis to.
Prior to 2008, Bogotá had served as a useful testing
ground for the left's ability to propose an alternative
to Colombian society. Former communist and trade
unionist Luis Eduardo Garzón, known popularly as
"Lucho," had extended social services in Bogotá (most
notably with the popular soup kitchens, based on Lula's
Brazil sin Hambre) whilst balancing the budgets and
even maintaining previous successful policies
implemented by Mayors Enrique Peñalosa and Antanas
Mockus. When Garzón's tenure came to an end, his
success meant that the Polo candidate was virtually
guaranteed victory in Bogotá, even against a resurgent
Peñalosa. Thus it was that Samuel Moreno, despite an
undistinguished political history, the dubious
distinction of being former dictator Rojas Piñilla's
grandson, and his disastrous "yes" answer to the
question "would you buy 50 votes to save Bogotá from
someone capable of buying 100,000 votes?," romped to
victory with 43% of the popular vote. His main
proposal, a metro system to supplement the innovative
yet limited Transmilenio, caught public imagination.
However, after more than a year in power, Moreno finds
himself lampooned in the press and plummeting in
popularity ratings. Undoubtedly, he has been the victim
of a campaign by the right to discredit him; problems
like immobility and insecurity have indeed been
exaggerated by the Polo's opponents, aware of the
importance of the mayor's reputation to the national
leftist movement. However, there is only an extent to
which this can explain his falling popularity.
Obviously, accusations about clientelism are hard to
substantiate, but just the sheer weight of criticism
from all sides of the political spectrum suggests that
something is not right. NGO and civil society leaders
complain of a labyrinth of patronage and favoritism
that have to be negotiated in order to win
participation contracts, and even Polo members such as
Petro have spoken out against the phenomenon. Most
recently, Moreno has been forced to deny receiving any
donations from the controversial "holdings company,"
DMG. Obviously, if the allegations were true, he would
not be the only Colombian politician to have succumbed
to the temptation of allying himself with the company,
but it would be disastrous for the reputation of a
party which had made political capital over Uribe's
poor handling of the affair.
Perhaps Moreno's worst crime is simply his lack of
direction. In stark contrast to the capital's last
three mayors, he has failed to articulate any clear
vision for the city, and has failed to introduce any
innovative proposals. While Peñalosa, Mockus and Garzón
arrived at the job with very clearly defined ideas of
how they wanted to improve the city (improving the
civic culture, public space, services, etc.), Moreno
seems to have nailed all his colors to the mast of the
metro project, without considering other issues. He
probably calculates that if the metro does indeed go
ahead, his failings will be forgiven by history, and he
may be right, but this is not the type of attitude that
Bogotá needs or deserves. As the mutterings against
Moreno rise to a deafening pitch, Polo activists and
supporters are nervously wondering if the failings of
one administration can tarnish an entire political
project, thereby undoing the hard-won gains of the last
five years.
An Uphill Struggle for Electoral Success
Although it is rarely stated explicitly, many of the
Polo's divisions revolve around the fundamental dilemma
over whether or not they should seek to emulate the
"21st century socialism" of neighboring Ecuador and
Venezuela, or aim for the more conciliatory social
democracy that Brazil has put on the table. From a
purely practical perspective, it is hard to imagine a
Colombian electorate voting in any project resembling
the former, while the latter does not do enough to
respond to the deep fissures in Colombian society.
Indeed, the dichotomy is exceedingly damaging for the
left, as it reduces all policies and proposals to a
choice between two poles, neither of which are
satisfactory.
The left, in spite of the opportunities presented to it
by a changing national and international context, is
failing to present a coherent alternative project to
Colombian society. It is deeply divided over a range of
fundamental issues. If, as expected, the Polo loses its
moderate members, it would undoubtedly suffer in the
eyes of the public. It is far too early to say whether
Petro will succeed in building a moderate left anti-
Uribista coalition, but there is no doubt that it will
be hard for him to build up a sufficiently significant
base of support without help from the Polo's activists.
If anyone is well served by the division, it is surely
the president, who gleefully watches as his opponents'
infighting gives him a far easier ride than he
deserves. Meanwhile, the Polo is becoming overly
associated with an inefficient and clientelist
administration in Bogotá, which is rapidly eroding the
party's reputation as an "alternative" option offering
a different way of doing politics. Most worrying of
all, it is failing to offer what Colombia and Latin
America most badly need: a leftist party capable of
going beyond the Lula-Chávez dichotomy, and
articulating imaginative and coherent responses to
issues such as drugs, the environment, and the
financial crisis.
This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Fellow
Rachel Godfrey Wood
================================================== ===
The Polo Democratico Flatters to Deceive: Divisions and
Clientelism Threaten to Ruin the Left's Big Opportunity
* Colombian right shows rare signs of fallibility under
President Uribe
* Public unrest with government corruption offers
glimmer of hope for leftists
* Factionalism within Polo Democratico looks set to
undermine 2010 election hopes
* Party shoots itself in the foot with links to
clientelism in Bogota
Council on Hemispheric Affairs
by Rachel Godfrey Wood
April 24, 2009
http://www.coha.org/2009/04/the-polo-democratico-flatters-to-deceive-divisions-and-clientelism-threaten-to-ruin-the-lefts-big-opportunity/
Colombia, it has often been said, has experienced so
many attempted revolutions that it has become a
profoundly conservative country. Who, after the
violence that followed Jorge Eliecer Gaitan's murder,
would have predicted that 50 years later, the country
would be the only one in the continent never to have
had an openly "left-wing" government? Or that the
conservative status quo could have been preserved for
so long without even requiring a military dictatorship?
Yes, leftist political hopes have often been
extinguished by repression (for example, the
extermination of the Union Patriótica in the 1980s),
and discouraged by the media, but not necessarily any
more so than in other countries on the continent, where
both moderate and radical left wingers have overcome
media bias and recovered from traumatic episodes to win
power. By contrast, Colombia's democratic left had not
registered a significant electoral result until 2006,
and even then was comfortably beaten by Alvaro Uribe
Velez.
Surveys repeatedly show that Colombians differ
profoundly from their compatriots in other countries in
their opinions on a broad range of issues, displaying a
genuine distrust of Hugo Chávez and, at times, an
unwarranted positive view of the United States'
regional role and of the beneficial potential of free
trade. While Colombia's bad human rights record makes
it a honey pot for left-leaning NGOs and emancipated
journalists, issues regularly emphasized outside
Colombia (such as the almost routine assassination of
trade unionists) rarely make it onto the average
Colombian's political radar.
An Opening, if not an Invitation
Despite this, Colombia's political left finds itself
with an unprecedented opportunity to increase its
political visibility, and maybe even challenge for
power. Following successful military operations to
assassinate FARC commander Raul Reyes and rescue high
profile hostages, Uribe's approval ratings had climbed
to 90 percent in 2008, a staggering achievement for any
president. In the second half of that year, though, a
series of scandals and problems put his re-election in
doubt. First, the "false positives" scandal revealed
what many had known for years: the government policy of
maintaining quotas for the murder of enemy combatants
creates morally perverse incentives, leading commanders
to kill innocent people and present them as such
"combatants". True to form, Uribe's teflon-esque
popularity was only marginally dampened by the scandal.
In November, however, the social calamity of the
pyramid/money laundering schemes finally managed to
achieve something that the Polo Democrático, the left-
leaning opposition party, failed to do in 5 years:
motivate the public into acts of spontaneous, popular
opposition to the government.
At a broader level, the unfettered capitalism favored
by Uribe has been dealt a massive blow by the
international financial crisis, and Colombia's five
years of high economic growth are coming to an end.
Despite insistences from the government and private
sector that the country is in a position to ride out
the crisis, Colombia's projected growth for 2009 is
continually being downgraded by analysts. It is now
recognized that the country is entering into a full-
blown recession, and this has forced the government to
nervously retreat from its neo-liberal policies by
proposing increased public spending to fend off the
crisis. Moreover, the weakening of the FARC may
ironically lower Uribe's silhouette in the long term,
as it will allow the Colombian electorate to consider
other factors which may negatively affect the country.
Finally, it should never be forgotten that Colombia has
a massive abstention rate, meaning a significant number
of people, mainly from the lower sectors of society,
remain uncommitted to Uribe's political project and his
personal fate. Despite all this, Uribe remains
exceptionally popular for a president who has been in
power for six years. Undoubtedly, Uribe, or one of his
allies, remains the favorite to win the 2010 elections,
but the competition will be far keener that it has in
recent years.
Work to be Done
The fact that the left struggles to make headway in
Colombia does not, of course, mean that it has little
to offer. Colombia is one of the most unequal countries
in a very unequal continent, has a legacy of human
rights abuses, and is blindly committed to self-
defeating drug prohibition policies. Theoretically, a
leftist party would be able to bring an end to the
barbarity of "false positives" and other state-related
human rights abuses. Beyond this, a left-wing
government would be able to void one of the main taboos
of the right, by pursuing an international campaign in
favor of the legalization of drugs, with the explicit
intention of targeting all of the country's illegal
armed actors. The left needs a central theme: to press
forward with a major land reform program in order to
expropriate land from the ever powerful drugs mafias,
and return it to smallholder peasants and displaced
people. It needs to move towards the universalization
of the country's health service to break the link
between individual earnings and quality of healthcare.
Finally, the Polo needs to get to grips with a key
issue where the right really has little to offer: the
question of how developing countries can articulate a
model which looks after the needs and desires of their
citizens, without simply locking themselves into the
environmentally unsustainable growth experienced by
China, India, and Brazil.
The Polo's Three Factions
At the very time that the left should be seizing the
national agenda by focusing on these long neglected
issues and preparing for the 2010 elections, it seems
more content to tear itself apart. The Polo has divided
into three feuding factions: the bureaucratic left of
Samuel Moreno's alarmingly clientelistic administration
in Bogotá, the radical left represented by people like
Senator Jorge Robledo, and the pragmatic and
conciliatory left of former M19 guerrillero Senator
Gustavo Petro and former Mayor of Bogota Luis Eduardo
Garzón. Between the three of them, these factions seem
poised to squander the left's big chance.
Divided Over Election Strategies: Insults fly as Petro
Leaves
After attaining the largest ever vote for a leftist
party in Colombia's history in 2006 (2.6 million), the
Polo Democrático faced many dilemmas, all of which have
manifested in a highly public discussion over electoral
strategy: whether to ally with other anti-Uribista
forces to gain power, or go it alone and emphasize
ideological coherence. The willingness of Petro and
Garzón to ally with the Liberal Party and other
"independent" political figures enraged the majority of
the Polo, led by former presidential candidate Carlos
Gaviria and Senator Jorge Robledo. They accuse Petro
and Garzón of abandoning their principles, and
shamelessly adopting Uribe's policies just to make
themselves more electable. They reject the possibility
of an alliance with Liberal President Cesar Gaviria, a
man who, after all, was the harbinger of neo-liberalism
in Colombia.
While such arguments may go down well among the Polo's
rank and file, they do not necessarily respond to the
reality of Colombia's political culture. Despite the
Polo's rise in the last few years, only its most
hardened supporters believe it is capable of defeating
Uribe on its own. The choice for the Polo is between
simply remaining an opposition party, and seriously
seeking to govern the country. Moreover, it is
insulting to suggest that a man like Petro, who has
dedicated a large portion of his political career to
exposing links between mainstream politicians and
paramilitary violence, simply lacks principles. Robledo
believes that the Polo would, by allying with more
centrist elements, lose its ideological edge, but does
this mean that refusing alliances, and remaining in
perpetual opposition, would really be a better way of
improving society? While people like Cesar Gaviria may
be neo-liberals, they also share similar ideas on the
central issues like drug policy, something which the
Polo could look to take advantage of.
On March 30, Petro made the entirely predictable
decision to leave the party. After months of
criticizing the Polo leadership, his exit did not shock
anyone, and neither did his parting shot, in which he
accused the party of being governed by a "clientelist-
extremist" alliance. He has announced a plan to build a
coalition with the Liberal Party and independently
minded progressive candidates including the eccentric
former Mayor of Bogotá, Antanas Mockus, former Mayor of
Medellin, Sergio Fajardo, and ex-FARC captive Ingrid
Betancourt. Petro proclaims that the party will focus
primarily on preventing Uribe's reelection, and
"getting Colombia out of the war." It is expected that
other Polo "moderates" like Lucho Garzón and Maria Emma
MejÃ*a will follow Petro out of the party, leaving
behind a more ideologically coherent but far less
electable political grouping.
The Democratic Left and the Insurgency
The Polo's divisions go far beyond a debate over
election strategy. The biggest point of contention is
that of the party's policy towards the Armed
Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC). If one had to
pinpoint one over-riding explanation for the weakness
of Colombia's left, it would surely be the problems
posed by the armed insurgency. Historically, the
Colombian electorate has often associated leftist
politicians and activists with the armed leftist
insurgents, a view also held by the rightwing
vigilantes who repeatedly have sought to link the Polo
with political violence. The Polo, however, has sought
to prevent any such illegal association from damaging
its reputation, and explicitly condemns all forms of
political violence, most notably FARC's recent massacre
of the indigenous Awa in Nariño. In some regions it is
clear that the Polo has indeed distanced themselves
from the FARC in the eyes of the public, as can be seen
by Uribe's vain attempts to tarnish Samuel Moreno's
campaign to be Mayor of Bogotá.
Petro, however, believes that the Polo have still
failed to sufficiently clarify their opposition to the
FARC in terms of concrete proposals. Petro believes
that Polo's wholehearted commitment to negotiations
with the FARC is outdated, as it fails to respond to
the reality that the FARC has historically used
negotiations as a different wing of the armed struggle,
rather than as an alternative to it. It seems unlikely
that the population at large will permit a return to
the days of negotiation, when the FARC failed to
participate in good faith and used the demilitarized
zone to intensify the cultivation of coca and
kidnappings. Recently, the proposal of negotiations has
borne more fruit, in the form of the liberations of 6
hostages in an action organized by controversial
Liberal Party Senator Piedad Cordoba. At the time of
writing, it seems increasingly likely that the FARC
will release one of their longest-held hostages, Pablo
Emilio Moncayo. Despite the joy aroused by these
actions, it is unclear whether they represent a genuine
desire for peace. Following the events of last year,
the FARC is in need of political breathing space, and
such actions have not been accompanied by any change in
its behaviour. In the last few months, it has been
guilty of "politics as usual", including the
assassination of the Awa and bombing of Villavicencio's
water supply.
As Petro forcefully argues, how can you hold up
diplomacy as the best solution when you know that the
other side only sees negotiations as an extension of
the military struggle? If there does come a point when
negotiations resume, it must be explicitly clear that
any discussions with the FARC or humanitarian agreement
must be an alternative to armed violence, rather than a
compliment to it. The issue has been exploited by
Uribe, who recently has called for a "cross-party
consensus against the FARC," including even "some of my
most vehement critics." Many in the Polo will
presumably see this as an attempt to further divide
them, and they may be right, but the Polo could gain a
lot by recognizing the success of Uribe's struggle
against the FARC whilst vociferously condemning him on
other issues. They should realize that the FARC has
only damaged Colombia's left, and that treating it with
kid gloves only weakens the reputation of their own
political project.
Bureaucracy and Clientelism in Bogotá
Most alarmingly of all, the Polo seems to be
squandering its only opportunity to put its political
proposals into practice. Samuel Moreno's mayorship in
Bogotá - the second most important position in the
country - has become a byword for the type of
clientelism and traditional politics that the Polo was
supposed to be the antithesis to.
Prior to 2008, Bogotá had served as a useful testing
ground for the left's ability to propose an alternative
to Colombian society. Former communist and trade
unionist Luis Eduardo Garzón, known popularly as
"Lucho," had extended social services in Bogotá (most
notably with the popular soup kitchens, based on Lula's
Brazil sin Hambre) whilst balancing the budgets and
even maintaining previous successful policies
implemented by Mayors Enrique Peñalosa and Antanas
Mockus. When Garzón's tenure came to an end, his
success meant that the Polo candidate was virtually
guaranteed victory in Bogotá, even against a resurgent
Peñalosa. Thus it was that Samuel Moreno, despite an
undistinguished political history, the dubious
distinction of being former dictator Rojas Piñilla's
grandson, and his disastrous "yes" answer to the
question "would you buy 50 votes to save Bogotá from
someone capable of buying 100,000 votes?," romped to
victory with 43% of the popular vote. His main
proposal, a metro system to supplement the innovative
yet limited Transmilenio, caught public imagination.
However, after more than a year in power, Moreno finds
himself lampooned in the press and plummeting in
popularity ratings. Undoubtedly, he has been the victim
of a campaign by the right to discredit him; problems
like immobility and insecurity have indeed been
exaggerated by the Polo's opponents, aware of the
importance of the mayor's reputation to the national
leftist movement. However, there is only an extent to
which this can explain his falling popularity.
Obviously, accusations about clientelism are hard to
substantiate, but just the sheer weight of criticism
from all sides of the political spectrum suggests that
something is not right. NGO and civil society leaders
complain of a labyrinth of patronage and favoritism
that have to be negotiated in order to win
participation contracts, and even Polo members such as
Petro have spoken out against the phenomenon. Most
recently, Moreno has been forced to deny receiving any
donations from the controversial "holdings company,"
DMG. Obviously, if the allegations were true, he would
not be the only Colombian politician to have succumbed
to the temptation of allying himself with the company,
but it would be disastrous for the reputation of a
party which had made political capital over Uribe's
poor handling of the affair.
Perhaps Moreno's worst crime is simply his lack of
direction. In stark contrast to the capital's last
three mayors, he has failed to articulate any clear
vision for the city, and has failed to introduce any
innovative proposals. While Peñalosa, Mockus and Garzón
arrived at the job with very clearly defined ideas of
how they wanted to improve the city (improving the
civic culture, public space, services, etc.), Moreno
seems to have nailed all his colors to the mast of the
metro project, without considering other issues. He
probably calculates that if the metro does indeed go
ahead, his failings will be forgiven by history, and he
may be right, but this is not the type of attitude that
Bogotá needs or deserves. As the mutterings against
Moreno rise to a deafening pitch, Polo activists and
supporters are nervously wondering if the failings of
one administration can tarnish an entire political
project, thereby undoing the hard-won gains of the last
five years.
An Uphill Struggle for Electoral Success
Although it is rarely stated explicitly, many of the
Polo's divisions revolve around the fundamental dilemma
over whether or not they should seek to emulate the
"21st century socialism" of neighboring Ecuador and
Venezuela, or aim for the more conciliatory social
democracy that Brazil has put on the table. From a
purely practical perspective, it is hard to imagine a
Colombian electorate voting in any project resembling
the former, while the latter does not do enough to
respond to the deep fissures in Colombian society.
Indeed, the dichotomy is exceedingly damaging for the
left, as it reduces all policies and proposals to a
choice between two poles, neither of which are
satisfactory.
The left, in spite of the opportunities presented to it
by a changing national and international context, is
failing to present a coherent alternative project to
Colombian society. It is deeply divided over a range of
fundamental issues. If, as expected, the Polo loses its
moderate members, it would undoubtedly suffer in the
eyes of the public. It is far too early to say whether
Petro will succeed in building a moderate left anti-
Uribista coalition, but there is no doubt that it will
be hard for him to build up a sufficiently significant
base of support without help from the Polo's activists.
If anyone is well served by the division, it is surely
the president, who gleefully watches as his opponents'
infighting gives him a far easier ride than he
deserves. Meanwhile, the Polo is becoming overly
associated with an inefficient and clientelist
administration in Bogotá, which is rapidly eroding the
party's reputation as an "alternative" option offering
a different way of doing politics. Most worrying of
all, it is failing to offer what Colombia and Latin
America most badly need: a leftist party capable of
going beyond the Lula-Chávez dichotomy, and
articulating imaginative and coherent responses to
issues such as drugs, the environment, and the
financial crisis.
This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Fellow
Rachel Godfrey Wood