OE Watch Commentary: The author of the accompanying reference is a well-known Colombian opponent of the FARC-Santos power sharing agreement. Here he outlines what many Colombians apparently see as the major grievances or maladies affecting the country and the abbreviated version here is a bill of particulars. Still, it seems to be a pretty good summary of what we can expect as the general argument that the candidate of the opposition coalition Democratic Center (not yet determined) will make during the campaign for the coming May elections. Notable on the list of maladies is an assertion that a million items of military weaponry have been spirited from Venezuelan military stores to the ELN and FARC remnants. The author addresses the article to urban dwellers, or more likely to urban voters, given that, as the article notes, most Colombians by far are city dwellers. End OE Watch Commentary (Demarest)
“…The cynical violence of the ELN and the ‘dissidents’ of the FARC in charge of their illicit businesses, and criminal bands, now including Mexican cartels, all brothers in the drug trade, are not phenomena only of the countryside, but of the cities as well….More than 70% of Colombians live in cities with more than 100 thousand inhabitants, and only five concentrate 16 million…
1. Micro-trafficking. …increase in drug consumption at increasingly earlier ages …
2. Narcoterrorism. …from 46 thousand hectares passing 200 thousand we returned to first place in world production of cocaine…
3. Venezuelan migration. …thousands of repatriated Colombians and Venezuelans cross the border daily without significant control. It is not about stigmatizing them or closing the doors to them, but the phenomenon is part of the diagnosis of insecurity in Cucuta and other cities….
4. Arms trafficking. …the Venezuela foundation Redes established that a million pieces of armament from thirty frontier garrisons have gone missing, that they end up with the ELN and FARC dissidences, with the blessing of the Maduro high command….
5. Campesino migration. …with the signature of the Accord, terrorism, extortion, dispossession, illegal mining and drug trafficking continue dominating the rural scene, with the consequence of displacement toward the cities…
6. Justice. …the prison system collapsed and in-home detection is a farce…”