The decision, known at noon this Friday, of the Attorney General’s Office of the Nation of deny the request of the National Government to lift the arrest warrants for various leaders of criminal gangs for them to participate in the total peace process closes a hard week for the flagship initiative of the government of Gustavo Petro.
(Also: ‘Total peace’: the two paths left to the ELN, according to Gustavo Petro)
The position of the Prosecutor’s Office, according to which there is no legal framework that allows lifting the arrest warrants against the heads of the gangs dedicated to drug trafficking, adds to other situations that They have revealed not only the difficulty of moving forward with peace initiatives, but also the apparent gaps in the strategy of the government’s peace team.
This Thursday judge 28 of knowledge rejected the freedom of three young people, arguing that they have no jurisdiction to grant it, detained on charges of participating in acts of vandalism in the 2021 national strike protests. The young people are Daniel Fernando Ruiz, Luidiar Felipe Camacho and Steven Guevara Vega, who were designated as spokespersons for peace by the Government.
(We recommend: The reasons of the Prosecutor’s Office for not suspending arrest warrants for gang leaders)
just beginning the year, The ELN denied the bilateral ceasefire agreement that had been announced by President Gustavo Petro himself on New Year’s Eve. This position of the ELN to continue in the war was manifested violently this week with the combats that left at least a dozen victims, supposedly members of the dissidents, in Arauca.
On Thursday it was reported that the Farc dissidents would be the authors of the kidnapping of the soldier Luis Domingo Morelos, in Santa Rosa, Bolívar.
On Tuesday, it had emerged that another faction of the dissidents kidnapped Sergeant Juan Gabriel Chachinoy in El Tambo, Cauca.
The renowned NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) assured on Thursday that violence in Colombia has taken new forms and that abuses by armed groups have increased in remote areas in recent yearsto the point where in 2022 the country returned to levels of violence “similar” to those prior to the peace process.
(You can also read: Will the government pay a political cost after the failed ceasefire with the Eln?)
In the midst of such a situation, the illegal armed actors take advantage to position themselves. Thus, for example, Antonio García, one of the leaders of the ELN, raised his voice and has already gone so far as to say that his organization feels like a victim of the government of Gustavo Petro. The birds shooting shotguns.
How to get out of this dramatic situation? Analysts believe that the government’s total peace policy is well-intentioned, but needs to be adjusted to the country’s reality and heed the lessons of past negotiations.
Jorge Restrepo, a university professor and director of the Conflict Analysis Resource Center (CERAC), assures that, despite the situation, “it is imperative that the National Government persist in the ‘total peace’ policy.”
“Persisting in the ‘total peace’ policy is a moral and political imperative, but for it to be successful, given the multiplicity of armed conflicts, it requires having a negotiation strategy with rules, that the negotiating authority be respected by officials of Government (including the Public Force), that there is legal support for the incentives for the submission of criminal groups with which they do not negotiate, build sufficient trust with the counterparts and have made the peace policy explicit, in accordance with criminal, anti-narcotics and security policy,” says Restrepo.
The multiplicity of existing actors with such dissimilar interests oblige the State to also reconsider the way in which total peace has been undertaken.
Can Danilo Rueda, High Commissioner for Peace, alone place such a challenge on his shoulders?
From your position, how do you see the work of Danilo Rueda, High Commissioner for Peace? EL TIEMPO asked Luis Mariano Montemayor, Apostolic nuncio in Colombia, a couple of weeks ago, in the face of criticism from analysts who even described him as naive.
“I don’t think he’s naive, maybe he’s enthusiastic, maybe he’s going too fast, but it’s also true that he has an urge to show results due to political needs. At some point I think he has to start releasing things, because humanly he can’t be in charge of so many things”, said the prelate.
(Can read: ‘Arsenal of peace’: the message of the Catholic Church for 2023 in Colombia)
It is also essential to improve the methodology for transmitting information about what is discussed at the table and what is told at the Casa de Nariño and vice versa.
“What happened with the ELN seems unlikely. There is still a blind spot. What happened behind the scenes of the negotiation for the guerrillas to deny the government? It is likely that the government felt that it was facing an easy negotiation. That its ideological orientation would turn the table into a piece of cake. In fact, Otty Patiño, in a statement, said that the negotiation was not properly between antagonists,” said Humberto de la Calle, the man who led a team that managed to get the FARC to hand over 13,000 weapons and become a political party.
“It is clear that unconsolidated unilateral announcements at the table constitute an enormous risk and a source of mistrust. The Government must rigorously unify its spokespersons. Define indisputably who should be involved in decisions. It is amazing that Otty did not know about the decree,” added the now senator.
In an article published in mid-December on the Razón Pública portal, the co-founder and researcher of the Conflict Responses Foundation, Kyle Johnson, analyzed the difficulties faced by this ambitious proposal by President Petro that is currently in force.
In it, he highlighted a fact to which other observers have also drawn attention:
(Too: Government and ELN: expectations regarding the second cycle of dialogues)
“There is no security policy. There is no ‘stick’ to pressure armed groups and criminals to really negotiateJohnson said. “As countless analysts in numerous spaces have said, there is no such thing as a security policy, much less one tied to ‘total peace.’ The Government says that it has been working on it, but as long as it does not come to fruition, the imbalance between carrot and stick will continue.”
This week it became clear that the National Government must refine all the mechanisms with the existing tools to bring to fruition one of the public policies that most obsess President Petro.
POLICY