2023-10-28 07:01:00
For the first time in an election in Colombia, the State had to negotiate with a criminal group the entry of electoral material into an area of the country and, in addition to this, invited it to inaugurate the day of voting alongside the authorities.
The incident, which for some social sectors means a defeat in terms of security and government, and for others is the best example of the positive achievements of “total peace”, unleashed a clash of statements between state entities and officials of the Nariño Palace. .
This story, with serious political and war implications, has as its epicenter El Plateado, a town of 8,000 inhabitants and a coca-growing economy in Argelia, Cauca.
This town has been the scene of a fierce conflict between insurgents, drug traffickers and Public Forces for years. The situation worsened in mid-2023 when the Army began a campaign to recover the Micay cannon, called Operation Thunder.
The military incursion has had strong resistance from the Central General Staff (EMC), the FARC dissident led by Néstor Gregorio Vera (“Iván Mordisco”).
The guerrillas are not willing to give up territory in which they “administer” one of the most important drug trafficking enclaves.
According to the monitoring of illicit crops by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (Unodc), between the municipalities of Argelia and El Tambo there are 10,099 hectares of coca and multiple artisanal laboratories in which that leaf is transformed into cocaine. In addition, its location offers river and jungle trails to the coasts of Guapi and Timbiquí, where they can export merchandise by sea.
The confrontation, characterized by ambushes, harassment and daily combats, had been mitigated on October 16, when the Government and the EMC signed a bilateral ceasefire, within the framework of the installation of the dialogue table.
However, the situation became complicated again last weekend. On October 20, social leader Miller Silva Rosero, vice president of the El Plateado community action board, was murdered.
They shot him just after leaving the headquarters of the Registry in the urban area of Algeria, where he had been trained to be a voting juror.
At the same time, the Military Forces deployed 5,000 uniformed personnel in Cauca to implement the Democracy Plan, seeking to guarantee the safety of voters for this October 29. But upon arriving at El Plateado, they crashed into an EMC defensive ring.
General Federico Mejía, head of the Cauca Specific Command, reported that there was harassment by the subversives and that his troops did not respond because the aggressors were hidden among the civilian population.
The Army retreated and the Registry Office was unable to bring electoral material (candidate files, ballot boxes, voter lecterns, etc.) into El Plateado.
According to the Electoral Observation Mission (MOE), due to issues like this, Algeria is part of the 22 municipalities in which the risk level increased to “extreme” (see the infographic).
Negotiation with the EMC
The El Plateado problem was brought to the negotiating table with the EMC last Monday. At the end of the meeting, the Government’s chief negotiator, Camilo González, announced that the counterpart had agreed to allow the entry of troops and delegates from the Registry.
However, when the military was going to enter the next day, they again encountered subversive squads and had to retreat.
The persistence of the problem generated another meeting of the delegations in Bogotá, this time with the national registrar, Alexánder Vega, in which he insisted on the urgency of guaranteeing the elections in Cauca, both for the officials and for the community.
At the end of the meeting, the EMC’s chief negotiator, Andrey Avendaño, said that his group would give the order to its combat fronts to allow access to El Plateado.
Its announcement caused relief in a sector of citizens, but also serious criticism for the fact that the deployment of the Democracy Plan had to be negotiated with a criminal group that has not yet been recognized with a political status, something unprecedented in recent history. from Colombia.
The fact is that, with the approval of this illegal structure, on Friday, October 27, the Army inserted 250 uniformed Special Forces in the urban area of Algeria and the corregimental capital of El Plateado, to finally bring the electoral material.
A controversial invitation
When this crisis was believed to be over, the Government and EMC dialogue table published a statement that surprised the entire country.
“The members of the peace dialogue table in full and at the invitation of the electoral authorities, will be present in Popayán on October 29 at the protocol opening of the voting for the entire country that will be done from this city,” said the document, signed by negotiators Camilo González and Andrey Avendaño.
In addition, he stated that the delegations would accompany the votes in El Plateado.
The indignation that this news produced spread quickly, generating rejection from opposition parties, academics, institutions and Internet users, who questioned the Government for granting powers of such magnitude to a group that has not even been sitting down to talk for a month. also violating the regulations and legitimacy of the State.
The Registrar’s Office and the National Electoral Council issued a joint response, stating that “it is not true that the Electoral Organization has invited them to the installation of the territorial elections.” They clarified that the guests were the civil authorities, the international observation missions and the members of the Public Force.
As a result of the discord, they decided that they were no longer going to hold the elections in Popayán.
Attorney Margarita Cabello declared that “the State cannot ally itself with illegality to facilitate the exercise of democracy. The protection of the electoral process is exclusively in the legitimately constituted competent authorities.”
The bomb of discontent also exploded within the Government. The Minister of Defense, Iván Velásquez, “categorically rejected the presence of the EMC in any scenario related to the next election day. Their participation is unacceptable in formal events and in voting stations anywhere in the country.”
President Gustavo Petro himself had no choice but to publicly disavow his chief negotiator. “Neither the peace commissioner nor the national government have given any authorization for the EMC to participate in opening events for the electoral process in any part of the country,” he tweeted on the X network.
Faced with the barrage of criticism, the dialogue table issued a second statement indicating, in other words, that the delegates would no longer attend the voting installation, to concentrate on their plenary sessions: “All activities will be private and will not “They will have intervention or participation in public settings.”
This time the EMC chief negotiator did not sign the letter, only González did.
The incident left in the air a feeling of disorder within the Government, a concern about the pressure that the EMC would be exerting to receive political status and multiple questions for the future: who authorized the first statement, announcing the presence of the EMC in the Popayán event? How stable is the position of the Government negotiators, unauthorized by President Petro? What awaits the unfortunate inhabitants of El Plateado, in the midst of a conflict with so many implications?
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