- Juan Manuel Santos, notorious Defense Minister in the
regime of outgoing President Alvaro Uribe and closely identified with high
crimes against humanity "won" the recent Presidential elections
in Colombia, June 2010. The major electronic and print media CNN, FOX
News, Washington Post, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and
the once liberal Financial Times (FT) hailed Santos election, as a great
victory for democracy. According to the FT, "Colombia not Venezuela
is (the) best model for Latin America" (FT 6/23/2010 p. 8). Citing
Santos "overwhelming" margin he garnered 69% of the vote,
the FT claimed he won a "strong mandate" (FT 6/22/2010). In
what has to be one of the most flagrant cover-ups in recent history, the
media accounts exclude the most egregious facts about the elections and
the profoundly authoritarian policies pursued by Santos over the past decade.
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- The Elections: Guns, Elites and Terror
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- Elections are a process (not merely an event) in which
prior political conditions determine the outcome. During the previous
eight years of outgoing President Uribe's and Defense Minister Santos'
rule, over 2 million, mostly rural poor, were forcibly uprooted and driven
from their homes and land and displaced across frontiers into neighboring
countries, or to urban slums. The Uribe-Santos regime relied on both the
military and the 30,000 member paramilitary deathsquads to kill and terrorize
entire population centers, deemed "sympathetic" to the armed
insurgency, affecting several million urban and rural poor. Over 20,000
people were killed, many, according to the major Colombian human rights
group, falsely labeled "guerrillas". Santos as Defense Minister
was directly implicated by the Courts in what was called "false positives".
The military randomly rounded up scores of poor urban youth, shot them
and claimed a resounding victory over the FARC guerrillas.
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- Several of the most important captured paramilitary
deathsquad leaders testified that over 60 of the congress people backing
Uribe Santos were on their payroll and they "ensured" votes
from regions under their control. Faced with damaging testimony, Uribe-Santos
double-crossed their narco-deathsquad comrades and "extradited"
them to the U.S. where the judicial process excluded evidence linking them
to the mass killings at the behest of Uribe-Santos.
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- Over two thousand trade unionists, human rights activists,
journalists and congress- people critical of Uribe-Santos were murdered
by deathsquad hit-men serving the regime. The world's major trade union
confederations have sent missions and published reports condemning Colombia
as the most dangerous country for workers' representatives.
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- In other words all the social sectors with social and
political grievances against the regime were terrorized, many of their
local opinion leaders, killed, displaced or driven into exile undermining
the possibility of sustained independent socio-political organization.
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- Pervasive state terror led to few local leaders surviving,
undermining the electorate's capacity to exercise a free and independent
organization.
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- On election day, the regime mobilized over 350,000 military
and police officials, many involved in the decade long repression, to "oversee"
the elections and to remind the voters of the force behind the "official
candidate" (La Jornada 5/30/2010).
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- The electoral outcome was far from the "mandate"
of the Colombian people as claimed by the mass media. The 'winner' was
the "abstentionists" with 56% of the electorate, the position
advocated by the FARC. Now clearly the majority of the abstentionist vote
did not reflect support or sympathy for the FARC; rather it reflected disaffection
with the regime's violent repression, massive dispossession of millions
and its total failure to deal with the under and unemployment affecting
40% of the economically active population.
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- In fact Santos received 30% of the vote of the electorate,
hardly a mandate. If we examine the social-ecological background of the
voters, it is clearly a mandate from the elite. The highest levels of
abstention were among several distinct groups. Among the shanty towns
and rural areas suffering from repression and neglect, abstention rose
to over 80%. In contrast, in the middle and upper class sectors of the
major cities, over 60% voted for the candidate of the regime. Uribe-Santos
tried to explain away the massive abstention by citing the weather (rain)
and the World Cup soccer matches .However the low turnout took place throughout
the country, in dry and inclement weather. And the games did not occupy
the entire day of voting. The mass media systematically ignored the horrendous
crimes under Defense Minister Santos, his indictment in the "false
positive" murders, his long term large scale association with the
death squads and with the Uribe regimes promotion of narco trafficking.
They ignored his support for de-regulating the financial system, resulting
in the defrauding of hundreds of thousands of Colombian small investors.
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- Comparing Colombia to Venezuela
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- Yet the Financial Times (6/23/2010) favorably compares
Colombia under Uribe-Santos against Venezuela under Chavez, "Crackers
about Caracas? Latin American should be bonkers about Bogota instead".
According to the FT Venezuela under Chavez is said to be unsafe, authoritarian
and economically in decline. The editors of the FT, echoing the rest of
the media, claim Colombia is a prosperous democracy, with a system of checks
and balances; with safe and peaceful neighborhoods except when the neighborhoods
of the poor protest unemployment or the rural villagers march against land
grabs by the landlord funded gunmen. The FT fails to mention the resurgence
of paramilitary gangs terrorizing the Colombian countryside, (La Jornada
5/28/2010) but instead they focus on street crime in Caracas.
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- The Venezuelan government, contrary to the US media,
promotes community based social movements which would be targets of military
raids in Bogota.
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- The only "paramilitary" groups in Venezuela
are cross-over's from Colombia, pursued and punished by the Venezuelan
National Guard. In Venezuela trade unions participate in the management
of major industrial plants, unlike Colombia where they are murdered including
workers in the major Coca Cola,coal, oil and banana industries.
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- Behind the media lies and falsifications abut Colombia's
election and its political leaders are several basic considerations.
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- Uribe-Santos are feverent free market advocates, eagerly
pursing a free trade agreement held up in the US Congress because of their
killing fields.
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- Uribe-Santos are unconditional clients of the Pentagon,
receiving $6 billion in aid and handing over 7 military bases, under US
jurisdiction to threaten Venezuela, Ecuador and any other country the Obama
regime deems a hostile to US domination.
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- Uribe-Santos recognized the Honduras regime, product
of a US backed military coup in mid 2009 contrary to the rest of
Latin America.
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- The fact that the mass-media have so enthusiastically
embraced a regime with the worst human rights record since the fall of
the military dictators of the 1970's - 1980's (La Jornada 6/17/2010)
is indicative of the right turn under the Obama Wall Street regime. According
to the White House and media, deathsquad democracies like Colombia now
qualify as "role models" for Latin America. The problem is that
neither the vast majority of Latin America citizens, nor most of the democratic
parties in the region are buying: they prefer democracies without deathsquads,
foreign military bases and narco-dealing Presidents. At present, the White
House's three leading allies in the region, Colombia, Peru and Mexico produce
and sell 80% of the cocaine in the region. Will this appear in the media's
salutations to newly elected presidents?
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