Leader of Deathsquads Wins Colombian Election
by James Petras / June 28th, 2010
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 hailed Santos election as a great victory for democracy. According to the FT, “Colombia not Venezuela is (the) best model for Latin America.”1 Citing Santos “overwhelming” margin – he garnered 69% of the vote, the FT claimed he won a “strong mandate.”2 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.
The Elections: Guns, Elites and Terror
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.
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.
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.
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.
More:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/06/leader-of-deathsquads-wins-colombian-election/
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
