Friday, 17 August 2012

Colombia's ex-president Andrés Pastrana to stand for election in 2014?


Pastrana as President in talks with the FARC
Colombia awoke to the news this morning that Conservative ex-President Pastrana was to run for election in 2014. According to the radio station, La W, the ex-president had decided, over a decade after leaving office, to try again for the Casa de Nariño. 

Pastrana's campaign was said to be based on the fight to secure peace, an ironic twist for critics who remember him as an unpopular president whose mandate had been tarnished by his failed attempts to deliver peace through negotiation talks with the ELN and the FARC. 


Those who view Pastrana more favourably point to the legacy he secured through the signature of the Plan Colombia, a treaty with the US that led to millions of dollars of aid to fight the FARC. This money allowed President Uribe to deliver his 'Democratic Security' strategy that pushed back the guerrillas and helped the president establish his reputation as the man who saved the country from the communist threat. 

Pastrana's tilt for the presidency was also understood to be based on his dismay at the direction his party is heading. Pastrana strongly criticised the previous Conservative leadership for what he saw as a  moral bankruptcy and an erroneous policy platform. It was, however, hoped that he would return to fold following the installation of Efraín Cepeda as party director at the end of last year. Cepeda is a protege of Pastrana and his politics are closer to those of the ex-president than were those of the previous leader, Salazar. 

While Pastrana has been less outspoken, he is understood to remain concerned about the Conservatives' role on the national stage. The party is within President Santos' coalition government, but they complain about a lack of influence on the president's policy decisions. Ahead of the start of this congressional session (in July), Cepeda put Santos on notice that the party was considering its position within the government, and that it demanded both a change the president's politics and the replacement of two cabinet ministers (implicitly moving two Conservatives into the vacated seats). 

Santos is yet fully to react to Cepeda's demands, and there are rumours that members of the party close to  Uribe are agitating to join the ex-president's new political movement, Puro Centro Democrático. The party threatens to split with former leader and arch-Uribista Salazar perhaps heading up the group of 'defectors'.  

Pastrana is anti-Uribista and fears the party is about to lurch to the mano dura rightism of his successor as head of state. But for Pastrana the thought of the Conservatives remaining (long term) with Santos offers precious little more in the way of comfort. 

Should the party remain with the president (or align with Uribe) and choose not to launch its own presidential candidate in 2014, Pastrana fears a continued decline in the influence of Conservatism. After the unsuccessful presidential candidature of Noemi Sanin in 2010, and the disastrous showing at the local and regional votes in 2011, the relevance of the party as an electoral force is in doubt. 

Pastrana is desperate to arrest this decline - the Conservatives, until the emergence of Uribe in 2002, formed part of a two-party state in which power alternated between them and the Liberal Party. It now threatens to be relegated to an also-ran.

Amid the uncertainty about the movement's plans for 2014, the ex-president appeared this morning to be taking matters into his own hands, announcing that, yes, there would be a candidate - and that it would belong to the centrist wing. 

No sooner had the La W aired its exclusive and Twitter - fast becoming the platform of choice for political debate in Colombia (with the lack of argument on the country's traditional media) - fizzed with with a mixture of shock and incredulity. Was Pastrana serious? Surely he had been off the stage too long and was too old? As for his attempt to position himself as the candidate of peace when he failed when last in office...

Judging by the reaction on Twitter - and given the Uribistas appear to outnumber the rest by a significant margin on this medium, it isn't a fair reflection of the national mood - Pastrana's election campaign would be doomed, defeat assured.  

By mid-afternoon, however, this near certain ignominious end was avoided and the shortest candidature in history was over. Pastrana emerged to announce that La W had got the wrong end of the stick - he was withdrawing his name before it went forward.

So was the La W just making it up? 

While the radio station might have misinterpreted the signals, there is an underlying political truth that Pastranism (if not Pastrana himself) is positioning itself for a move within Conservatism. 

At the end of last year before Cepeda took over the leadership, party bigwigs began to coalesce around the possibility of a Pastrana return as CEO. Cepeda was seen as the candidate to unite both wings, keeping the Pastranistas onside. The news today suggests that the level of discontent is rising. Pastrana's non-candidature is a form of threat, a cry to be heard and start of a crucial period for Conservatism.  The party must decide its future direction ahead of next year and the start of the painfully long pre-election period.  

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Also published on Redes Colombia