Colombia Mayors, Judges, Declared "Military Targets"

by Maria Isabel Garcia

Underlying the problem is "a dispute of legitimacy" and "a demonstration of strength in the regions," political analyst Marcos Romero, a professor at the public National University, told IPS.

The result "could be a setback in the progress made over the past decade towards the decentralization of democracy, with the adoption of direct popular elections of mayors and governors" in 1991, as well as "limitations of individual liberties," he warned.

The FARC, Colombia's main insurgency, controls around half of the territory of this South American country of 42 million, although not the areas where most of the population is gathered.

Bogota Mayor Antanas Mockus, one of the officials threatened by the FARC, accused the leftist group of following a model of "extreme authoritarianism, vaguely related to the Marxism it continues to invoke.

"I wouldn't abandon the mayor's office for any reason," stated Mockus, although he admitted that his fellow mayors in small towns are in a more vulnerable position.

The names of Mockus and 10 other mayors in the department of Cundinamarca, where the capital is located, are on a list of authorities to whom the Eastern Command of the FARC gave until June 26 to resign.

Those who "fail to comply with that order could be captured or executed...our slogan is to not allow any representative of the state to continue functioning in any of the municipalities," stated the guerrillas in a communique that was intercepted and made public by authorities.

The FARC ultimatum was addressed to mayors, town councilors, inspectors, judges and prosecutors in the southeastern departments of Amazonas, Arauca, Boyaca, Casanare, Guainia, Guaviare, Meta and Vichada, and to a few officials in other parts of the country.

According to authorities, FARC military chief Jorge Brice–o, alias "Mono Jojoy," gave all of the FARC columns the order to threaten and intimidate local officials into resigning, in order to carve out strongholds for the rebel group.

Other FARC divisions launched an offensive against municipal authorities in the departments of Caldas and Risaralda, in Colombia's central coffee-producing region, the central department of Santander, and Norte de Santander in the northeast.

On Jun. 21, 100 officials in Arauca, on the border with Venezuela to the east, presented their resignations, including nine mayors as well as lawmakers and town councilors. But the governor of the department of Arauca, Eduardo Bernal, refused to accept the resignations, on orders from the central government.

However, the mayor of the city of Arauca, Jorge Cedeno, said today that "the mass resignations are still in place," after he arrived in Bogota to seek a meeting with President Andres Pastrana.

Meanwhile, right-wing paramilitaries in Arauca issued their own threats, warning the mayors not to resign, which meant local officials have found themselves caught between a rock and a hard place, said the executive secretary of the mayors' federation, the National Federation of Municipalities, Gilberto Toro.

Mayor of Guatape Orlando Giraldo announced on Jun. 22 that he and 22 other mayors in the central department of Antioquia had decided, in an assembly, to resign.

"Due to the serious threats that the FARC has issued against local institutions, our physical integrity and that of our families, we have been forced to jointly and publicly present our resignations from the popular mandate that our communities democratically granted us," announced the group of 23 mayors.

The 23 mayors form part of a movement demanding a regional effort to reach human rights agreements with the rebels, in order to ease the pressure from the armed conflict on civil society. The 38-year civil war claims several thousands of civilian lives a year.

But the central government does not accept that initiative. "It is impossible to trust the FARC to keep its word," Defence Minister Gustavo Bell said yesterday in Medellin, the capital of the department of Antioquia. Bell, who was presiding over a security council meeting, urged the mayors to remain in their posts.

The minister promised local authorities that they would receive stepped-up protection, and said they should not resign "because by doing so, they are playing into the hands of the FARC, which after all is only a violent minority group."

Luis Arias, president of the Federation of Governors, which has the responsibility to accept or reject the resignations, told RCN, a local radio station, today that "we must not allow" the mayors to step down, because "there is only one democracy, and all Colombians must come out to work and defend it."

"I am not here to contradict the guerrillas. Democracy is stronger than the FARC's challenge," Nestor Ramirez, mayor of San Vicente del Cagu‡n, in the southern department of Caquet‡, told the daily El Tiempo.

San Vicente del Cagu‡n was the site of the three-year peace talks with the FARC that the government broke off on Feb. 20. An area the size of Switzerland in Caquet‡ had been turned over to the 18,000-strong insurgent group to start the talks.

Mayor Ramirez was elected on the ticket of the Verde Oxigeno (Green Oxygen) party, whose presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, was kidnapped by the insurgents.

Although threats against mayors are nothing new in Colombia, the current wave of intimidation began early this month, when 16 mayors in the department of Caquet‡ and seven in the southeastern department of Huila were declared military targets by the FARC.

Today, the mayors "are facing the same situation that Colombia's peasant farmers have been facing for years," said Romero at the National University.

Faced with total abandonment by the state, rural residents in war-torn areas have few options: join the war, migrate to the slums surrounding the large cities, or be killed, kidnapped or "disappeared," said the analyst.

"Traditionally, the FARC have launched actions to usher out and welcome governments," like the current escalation, which coincides with the lead-up to the end of Pastrana's administration and the beginning of President-elect Alvaro Uribe's term on Aug. 7.

It is "ironic" that the leftist FARC and the hard-right, hawkish Uribe "are tending to intensify authoritarianism and the civil war simultaneously," he added.

The current offensive will not demonstrate the degree to which the guerrillas or the paramilitaries control territory, but it will demonstrate "their capacity to destabilize the country," said Romero.

The state "lacks the capacity" to protect the mayors through the military, because no security forces are even present in 180 of the country's 1,089 municipalities.

In many regions, the presence of the state is "quite fragile and traumatic," and it is likely that under the government of Uribe, there will be even sharper limitations to individual freedoms, said the analyst.

The armed forces have been shown to have links to the 8,500-member right-wing paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which are held responsible for the majority of the war's atrocities against civilians.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson has expressed concern about the violence carried out by the paramilitaries, and accused members of the security forces and government officials of "undermining" the work of human rights advocates.

Fernando Londono, who is to be Uribe's minister of the interior and justice, said he planned to seek a reform of the constitution, adopted in 1991, which ushered in direct popular elections for mayors and governors, and decentralized administration of the country.

But Londo–o said he wanted to return to the state of siege that was in effect for nearly half a century in this violence-torn country.

The current wave of threats against mayors seems to feed into the arguments of those who want the government to declare a state of siege. Ombudsman Eduardo Cifuentes has already suggested that the government decree a state of "internal commotion," one of the states of emergency stipulated by the constitution.