Washington is Voting for the Candidate of War in Colombia
Nil Nikandrov - http://www.strategic-culture.org
The second round of the presidential elections in Colombia will take place on 15 July. Despite predictions, the first round did not end in favour of current president Juan Manuel Santos, who ceded three percent of the vote to his main rival Oscar Zuluaga. One would think that this gap is small, and that Santos now has the chance of turning the tide in his favour. A significant part of those who would have voted for candidates who have since dropped out are intending to give their vote to Santos, who is leading his election campaign under the slogans of achieving civil peace, demilitarisation, and the creation of favourable conditions for social and economic reforms.
The prospect of Santos’ new policy, however, which has been unconditionally subordinate to orders from Washington in the past, has prompted the Obama administration to make adjustments to its own policy toward Colombia. A stake has been placed on Oscar Zuluaga, the candidate for the right-wing conservative movement Democratic Center and protégé of ex-president Alvaro Uribe, the shadow boss of the Colombia drug mafia, and the organiser and instigator of far-right paramilitary organisations.
Time and again, reports have appeared in the media about their disbandment, along with stories about how their leaders had been tried on terrorism charges, but in the end it turns out that the most combat-ready paramilitary groups continue to operate. They are concentrated on the Venezuelan and Ecuadorian borders, and their gunmen are being used to carry out terrorist attacks in other countries including Brazil, whose government Washington regards as unfriendly, especially since Dilma Rousseff is still demanding clear public apologies from the Obama administration for America’s all-out electronic and human espionage in Brazil, and is starting to distance itself from the Empire, including in the sphere of military and technical cooperation. In response, Washington, as usual, is using its agents from the ‘fifth column’ and NGOs to wage anti-football protests, compromising the World Cup in Brazil.
Prominent Venezuelan politician José Vicente Rangel recently stated that the US has increased its infiltration of paramilitaries in Venezuela’s border areas in order to ‘argue’ for the need to deploy US armed forces and their closest allies in the country ‘in line with the OAS mandate’. Zuluaga is being regarded as a promising player in the fulfilment of this goal. He is sharply critical of the peace talks with representatives of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), preferring their complete surrender and unilateral disarmament. He also makes no secret of his harshly critical attitude toward any option which includes left-wing insurgents in the country’s political life.
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