Fernando Londoño was in rare form in his latest
target="_blank">column, which appeared in Monday’s edition of El Tiempo.
He informs us that the Uribe government’s peace talks with paramilitaries would
be going just swimmingly if it weren’t for the sabotage of those all-powerful
human-rights activists, UN representatives, former guerrillas and other assorted
communists.
While our pueblo in arms gives its lives in jungles and valleys for
Colombia’s Liberty, and the vast majority of our judges and prosecutors do
their duty with an abnegation and selflessness that we will never forget,
the juridical dogs work indefatigably to render sterile the efforts of their
blood and sweat. Leading this entourage marches Mr. [Michael] Frühling [the
head of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Bogotá Field Office], demanding
the memory, reparations and justice that the UN never mentioned when he and
[UN Special Representative James] LeMoyne were embracing the FARC’s murderers
in the Caguán [during the failed 1998-2002 peace process]. They are followed
by all the Associations and Collectives of jurists, with their purses filled
with foreign gold, proposing whatever perverse obstacles that might slow the
progress of our tragedy’s final process, while also inventing arguments that
they never mentioned when talks were occurring with the band of Marxist bandits.
At their side, some pardoned members of the old M-19 [dissolved guerrilla
group], who want to occupy the professor’s chair of moral values, using the
part of their conscience not compromised by their massacres, kidnappings,
vile murders and acts of terror. In the group are Communist legislators, who
venerate the Chávez dictatorship and detest the democracy in which we permit
them such freedoms.
Londoño seems to have left off his list the paramilitaries’ many victims and
their relatives, who no doubt are doing the fatherland a disservice with their
constant bellyaching about accountability, reparations, the return of their
stolen property, and their desire to see the AUC truly disappear.
I wouldn’t bother to translate and post this if it were just the ravings of
another paleo-right, anti-modern, feudal-landowning, red-baiting dinosaur still
fighting the cold war. (You’re on your own, for example, if you want to wade
through Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza’s
target="_blank">screed in Sunday’s El Nuevo Herald.)
But Fernando Londoño is no ordinary extremist crackpot. Until about a year
ago, he was perhaps the most influential figure in Ãlvaro Uribe’s government.
In 2002, when the newly elected president was picking his cabinet, he created
a hugely powerful post by fusing the ministries of interior and justice – and
then surprised most by picking Londoño to fill it. The outspoken minister lasted
only fifteen months, consumed by
target="_blank">scandals about shady investment deals and embarrassing misstatements
(such as suggesting that Uribe, if denied a chance to run for re-election, would
resign, call new elections, and run again).
No space will be wasted here responding to the “arguments†in Londoño’s column;
CIP has written much elsewhere about the
and the important role of NGOs.
If Fernando Londoño ever reads this, though (say, if he Googles himself), I’d
like to say to him: Mr. Londoño, you’re doing your former boss a grave disservice
with this overheated, irresponsible prose.
And to President Uribe, who hired Londoño in the first place: You will be known
by the company you keep.
December 22nd, 2004 at 2:31 pm
Then again, I wouldn’t overestimated Mr. Londoño’s current influence and stature, seeing that he and Pedro Juan Moreno, who had previously been rather close to Uribe in one way or another, have been rather critical of certain of his government’s actions lately…and also because of other reasons, some mentioned in the following article:
http://semana2.terra.com.co/opencms/opencms/Semana/articulo.html?id=83855
Uribe’s certainly a clear rightwinger, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t have plenty of mutual disagreements with elements further to the right.
January 28th, 2007 at 11:32 am
True, the paramilitaries HAVE committed injustices and their families have suffered, but Londoño´s argument remains solid. NGOs are outspoken against paramilitaries who gave up their arms and willingly accepted their jail cells, but not a word about “guerrillas” that have been equally cruel and have never showed any signs of actually considering peace. If the conflict is to be settled by way of negotiation, the way Human Rights organizations preffer, then some compromises must be made to get bandits to give up their arms, whatever political standpoint they claim to have. That is the argument that you quote and the one you should refute, but not a word on that, merely insults that only prove Londoño right.