The government presented in Congress a submission law; which only bears the name of it. It seems that the objective of the Petro Government is to extend the impunity granted in the Havana Agreement to any criminal in the country.
An article of our constitution allows differential treatment for crimes committed for political reasons. I have presented several times projects to abolish that article. No Colombian can exercise violence on another for political reasons, or for any reason. However, the government has already given the ELN political status, and intends to do the same with the dissidences (those that did not negotiate and others that failed to comply). This means that for all of them they will apply measures similar to those applied to the FARC.
We believed that criminal gangs, organized armed groups and common criminals might not have negotiations that would lead to impunity. But this government wants to negotiate with them, including the traqueo and the mafia organizations.
The matter is not minor, it is a criminal policy of releasing criminals, on the basis -in my opinion, wrong- that with this clean slate, crime in the country will decrease.
Violence in Colombia – and I never tire of repeating it – has more to do with illegal businesses than with political issues. As long as drug trafficking and criminal mining continue, we will have a very big challenge as a nation. And it is not true that by getting rid of the men who now run these businesses, the country will improve its security; still believing that everyone who commits will comply. As soon as some leave, others will enter; as it has already been happening.
And someone who reads me, and does not agree on the conclusion, will wonder if it will not be worth trying; and I have to say no, emphatically. We have done it and we have failed, it is enough to observe what has happened with the FARC, whose demobilized men have already been surpassed by the new recruits to all the groups. But even more, consider the effect in the future: each new group will feel that they have the right to this negotiation and a path opens up for us that legitimizes a life in crime, which ends with 6-8 years in prison and the legalization of 6 % of profits, up to a maximum of 11 billion pesos.
President Petro busily seeks to match the benefits we grant to groups with political status with those that might be granted to other criminal organizations.
Even without a submission law, he wanted to lift the arrest warrants for criminal leaders and even drug traffickers requested in extradition. Prosecutor Barbosa had to stop the strange operation.
Now with the law for the humanization of prisons and the so-called “submission law” it intends to hide amnesties and pardons under the figure of the principle of opportunity. Delinquents from Clan del Golfo to the traqueto. Drug trafficking would be legalized; they issue arrest warrants and intend to give him impunity.
To this must be added the suspension of all anti-drug policy. Seizures of cocaine fell by more than 30% and heroin by more than 70%. Not a single hectare of coca was eradicated in January of this year. In addition to the new policies where forced eradication, bombing, and fumigation were prohibited, and accompaniment of the coca-growing assemblies was passed, which also inspires the “kidnapping” to be called a “humanitarian siege.” The removal of more than 70 generals from the military leadership, plus the massive resignations that we know today of many officers; the bilateral ceasefires by the National Government, which only apply to the Armed Forces. It begins with all of the above to generate a dangerous scenario for the security and future of Colombia.
Here there is not a total peace process, but one of total impunity. Lethal for the institutions and high risk for the citizens of Colombia, increasingly unprotected once morest the violent and with a government concentrating on conversing with the criminals and not with the citizenry. And it appears as an additional shadow to all this, the news regarding the money that the gangsters delivered for the Petro Presidente campaign through the son and the visits of the president’s brother to the prisons offering impunity in exchange for political support, even to extraditable. A single long shadow.
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