#Clara López

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Lopez evicts Communists from Polo Democracts

Communists march in Bogotá

Communist FARC sympathisers were this week kicked out of Colombia’s main opposition party, the  Democratic Pole (PDA) by leader Clara López.

Using the news that the Communist Party are to join forces with Piedad Córdoba’s controversial Marcha Patriótica which is accused of being the political front for the guerrilla group, López has acted swiftly to purge extremists and to halt the Polo’s drift to the far-left.

Communist Party Leader, Carlos Lozano has of course reacted with indignation, labelling López’s moves ‘illegal’. But after a disastrous month for the left in which it has lost the support of large sections of society following its public support for Hugo Chávez’s re-election in Venezuela, and for appearing to side with indigenous groups over the army during the attacks in Cauca, López might just have saved her party from obliteration.

Polo – a party in perpetual revolution?

The PDA was formed in 2005 as a left-wing alternative to the centre and right-wing politics that predominate in Colombia. As a conglomeration of groups and movements from across the left, the party has always appeared pluralist and has tended to splits and vacillation on policy decisions. Electorally, success has been evident if not overwhelming.

The highlights have been the election of Samuel Moreno as Mayor of Bogota in 2007, and also in the capture of the department of Nariño from where governor Antonio Navarro Wolf has become one of the country’s most recognisable opposition politicians. In congress there are eight senators and five representatives in the second chamber, and in the presidential elections of 2010, the Polo’s candidate, Gustavo Petro came a very respectable fourth.

But the PDA is in perpetual crisis. Unable to stick together after the elections of 2010, the party lost its main star performer, Petro, who, in protest at the lack of will to tackle the corruption within the group, set up his own party, the Progressives with whom he won the Bogota mayoral election last year. Support for the left has been split and natural Polo voters have been leaving in droves to support Petro’s Progressives – crucially  three senators made the same journey last month.

In January, Clara López returned to lead the party following a successful stint as the caretaker mayor of Bogota. Her job is to prepare PDA for the elections in 2014, to establish a credible policy platform and to strengthen the unity and party machine ahead of the campaign.

The left’s opportunity

This website has argued that the PDA need to unite and move towards the centre, to gain a level of elect-ability. López herself has performed well, but her party appears determined to implode.

Last month this website reported on the study commissioned by the left-wing think tank, Nuevo Arco Iris which revealed that around a third of the Colombian electorate is prepared to vote for a presidential candidate from the left. In theory – found the report – with a likeable, centrist figure capable of uniting the entire movement there is an outside chance of victory. For me victory is out of reach, but a respectable second and a place in the run-off is a possibility.

The PDA ought to use this once-in-a-generation-opportunity to pull together. The imperative is to establish a narrative based on a series of attractive policies that can be sold to the majority of Colombians who are not attracted by the far-left statism that typifies Latin American socialism. The problem for the party is that it is doing precisely the opposite.

Pushing the self-destruction button?

Last month the PDA came out publicly in support of Hugo Chávez’s re-election campaign. Chávez is loathed in Colombia for his support for the FARC and his resulting complicity in the murder of thousands of Colombians. For a political party that wants to win an election, lending support to ‘enemy number one’ for millions of compatriots is naive and self-indulgent.

López is not naive, though. She understood that the seriousness of PDA was beginning to be questioned – that arresting this decline in support as become a political necessity.

The announcement from the Communist group within the PDA that it was join the Marcha Patriótica is therefore manna from heaven. By expelling the group, López shows the doubters that she will not tolerate hardliners in her ranks. The Communists departure was explained to be a legal decision (in Colombia politicians can’t represent two parties) rather than a once taken on ideological grounds. Most people will, however, read between the lines.

Make no mistake, any link with the Marcha Patriótica would have been electorally fatal for the PDA. The movement is headed by Piedad Córdoba the famous face of the far-left who was thrown out of the parliament in 2010 for her alleged links with the FARC. Córdoba is for many in Colombia a figure of hate – a mouthpiece for the guerrillas.

Last month videos emerged of the ex-senator inciting indigenous communities to rise up against the government and throw out the army. Days after Córdoba’s speech, indigenous groups attacked and threatened the army who were engaged in combat with the FARC in the department of Cauca. Colombians doubted this was coincidental.

For many in the country, including the Defence Minister, Pinzón, the Marcha Patriótica is the political wing of the guerrilla group. In Cartagena last week, Pinzón confirmed that the Marcha is ‘financed in good part by the terrorist organisation the FARC’.

There is much work that must be done if the Democratic Pole is to regain political credibility. López has saved it – for now – from destruction, but she must continue to fight to marginalise those with a socialist vision for Colombia. The PDA’s eventual programme for government must be moderate and based on change rather than revolution.

The question is whether the left care about winning or whether they want to remain on the fringes of power – the smart money appears to be on the latter.

Category: Comment, Left wingers
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Left-wing López capable of a Colombian presidential ‘coup’?

Resounding electoral success is not a phrase often used to describe the Colombian left; unsurprising in a country that has endured 50 years of war against Communist insurgents.

If recent polls are right, however, the presidential elections of 2014 are a once in a generation opportunity to redraw the political map. A third of voters appear set to vote left-wing while the right will be split between a Uribe-backed-horse and President Santos.

If a candidate can be found to unite the left, and appeal to those in the centre, then victory is a (very distant) possibility – well that´s what they´d like you to believe, of course. There are many names in the frame but only one that appeals – Clara López, President of the Polo Democratic Alternative party. The grandstanding polemicists must now give way and let López, a serious politician with real experience, have a shot at the Casa de Nariño.

A divided left?

Gustavo Petro, the Mayor of Bogota, is the left-winger with the most power in Colombia. His position is the second most important in the country, and despite his militancy with the old guerrilla group M-19 he was able to win over a sufficient number of middle and upper income voters to take control of the city in November. His mandate began in January and has been – so far – underwhelming.

In an earlier article published on this website Petro’s approach to winning the election – against the establishment candidate, Enrique Peñalosa – was examined and proposed as a blueprint for the left in future elections. Petro, originally seen as a firebrand who scared away any voter not ideologically tied to his brand of socialism, moderated his style and shifted the focus of his speeches on to the centre ground.

Unfortunately for Bogota this strategy was forgotten as soon as he entered power; his regression to the left has alienated and polarised voters.

Petro is a lesson for the left – both in how to win elections and how (not) to remain in power once there.

Petro is also a warning to left-wingers to avoid the temptation towards internal warfare. The Polo Democratic Alternative party who supported Petro’s presidential campaign in 2010 were unable to unite around his candidature for the mayoralty of Bogota. Petro, in protest at the party’s refusal to condemn corrupt members, left the party to form his own movement, the Progresives.

The Progresives split the Polo vote. The movement, bruised by Petro’s denunciations and internal splits, went on to record catastrophic local election results in November last year. Had the party acted to clean up the corruption and used Petro as a figurehead nationally and in the capital, the results would no doubt have been quite different.

Petro is by no means the only important politician to have left the Polo. Luis Eduardo (“Lucho”) Garzón – a former Bogota Mayor – ditched the party to form the Greens, essentially a left-leaning party (despite being officially part of the Santos coalition government). The Greens have been electorally successful, most significantly gaining the governorship of Antioquia with Sergio Farjardo.

Another figure of the left is Piedad Córdoba, a controversial former senator who is accused of suspiciously close relationships with the FARC and with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Córdoba, an excellent orator and former member of the Liberal Party, this year established her own movement, the far left, Marcha Patriotica.

The left in Colombia is riddled with factions – it must repair them to select a candidate capable of winning the presidency.

Alongside the personalisation of its politics there is another reason why the left in Colombia has failed to make electoral inroads. As Oscar Fernando Sevillano, writing for the Bogota think tank Corporación Arcoiris argues, the left have been ‘frustrated by the extreme right, the political elites in the regions, and parts of the military and the police have participated in their extermination’.

Remembering Gaitán, Galán, and Lara Bonilla, not to mention the hundreds of council candidates that over the years have been silenced, it is difficult to argue with Sevillano’s assessment. Sad then that news emerged this week of a planned attempt on Petro’s life.

The opportunity:

While the threats to the left of either internal annihilation or external assassination are not insignificant, the opportunity to make history is there. Leon Valencia, director of Nuevo Arcoiris in a comment piece for Semana heralded the results of the poll commissioned by his organisation in which it was revealed that 28% of voters would vote for a left-wing candidate.

According to Valencia, the poll is ‘a message of great hope’ for the leaders of the Colombian left. Should they ‘choose a single candidate who looks to the centre’ he ventures, ‘they have a chance of reaching the Palace of Nariño’.

Valencia went on to argue that with the split in the votes of those on the right – as a result of the fight between Uribe and Santos – there is every possibility that the candidate of the left could win through to the second round – the head-to-head. Valencia drew analogy to Petro’s victory in Bogotá, showing how a surprise candidate – in a crowded field – can sneak through the middle.

Choosing the candidate – Colombia’s ´Iron Lady´

The left have been successful in Bogota, it has been a long-held bastion of progressive thought. Many capital cities in the world are more left-wing than the rest of their nation. To win in 2014, the left needs to choose a candidate that can appeal not only to the liberal metropolitan elite, but also to the rural voters.Clara López – despite her Bogota credentials – is this person; a serious and respected voice of the moderate left. She has appeal across all sectors of Colombian society, and will not alienate or repel votes.

In January Clara López returned to the presidency of Polo following a highly successful period as the caretaker Mayor of Bogota. Having taken over from Samuel Moreno – who had been suspended on corruption charges – López succeeded in uniting the capital, governing from the centre, and vanquishing the ghosts of her predecessor’s regime. López’s reputation as safe pair of hands had been cemented – and she remains one of the few left-wing Colombians with real and tangible governing experience.

The appeal of Doctora López is based not only in her experience but also her character. Her image is not that of the prototype politician of the Latin American left. Cadenced rhetoric and polemical speeches about imperialist Yankees are not her style; she is a rolled-up-shirt-sleeve, no-nonsense politician. The tone of her discourse is serious and modest, the content realistic, not idealistic.

‘Colombia’s Iron Lady’  (as a Brit who grew up in the time of the real Iron Lady, I know one when I see one) often wears thick rimmed glasses, pins tightly back her hair and dresses seriously. She is more akin to head mistress of a posh British school than a gun-toting revolutionary.

Although aristocratic and formidable, although schooled overseas and an impeccable member of the governing class, López has never let the common touch evade her. The aloofness of oligarchical arrogance that Santos is accused (unfairly) of is not in evidence here.

Examining her closely, there is almost something Churchillian in her stare and in her determination to do what she believes is right. If the left wants a presidential candidate that will deliver blood sweat and tears, it should look no further.

Also published on redescolombia

Category: Comment, Left wingers
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Senator Robledo’s bid to change Colombia’s politics

Robledo, photo El Espectador

 

The 2014 Colombian presidential race is already underway. For once the talk is not about Juan Manuel Santos’ re-election. Nor is the focus on the machinations of the former president, Alvaro Uribe. This week we learnt that Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo, the intellectual left-winger intends to allow his name to go forward as a candidate.

Eloquent and polemical, Robledo has star appeal. He is, now that Gustavo Petro is in power, the most vocal and recognisable opposition politician in Colombia. In the 2010 senate race Robledo secured the third highest vote. He is undoubtedly a cult figure.

The left’s candidate of choice?

It is not in any way certain that Robledo will emerge as the chosen candidate for his Polo Democratic party. Clara Lopez, the Polo Democrats’ president is the favourite to secure the nomination. But the party is unlikely to decide this before next year, leaving plenty of scope for Robledo’s star to continue to ascend.

An eventual Robledo candidature would offer Colombians radical change. Robledo is opposed to just about every policy of the Santos administration. In fact Robledo runs counter virtually to the entire political culture of the country.

Robledo has made his career attacking the effects of the pro-market neo-liberalist policies that have reigned in Colombia since the 1990 presidency of Cesar Gaviria. Robledo is a red-blooded socialist who tends to protectionism, and the anti-big business rhetoric popular in large swathes of Latin America.

He is against the free-trade agreement with the USA, against private involvement in university education, and against the (as he sees it) colonialism of the Washington Consensus. Were he to win the presidential elections, he would quickly set about reversing much of the work of the last 20 years of centrist and right-wing Colombian governments.

In a telling interview with the quality publication El Colombiano earlier this month, Senator Robledo told Colombians that their country is on the sick-bed, and that the treatment the Santos presidency is administering is making the patient worse.

In this article, Robledo sets out the case for an alternative government for Colombia. A government based on socialist ideals. The senator’s thoughts for this brave new world were published a little over a week before it came to light that he was exploring the possibility of his candidature, as it is put. He will consult friends within the Polo Democratic Party before deciding his course of action.

Should he get a chance to present his prospectus, the article in El Colombiano sets outs clearly how this policy platform might look.

He argues that during the eighteen months of the Santos regime Colombia has gone from bad to worse. His principle argument is that government policies have benefited the monopolies, big businesses, and foreign investors at the expense of the poor, the middle classes, and the country’s small and medium-sized businesses. According to Robledo, Santos has widened Colombia’s inequality gap, reinforcing its status as the third most unequal nation on earth.

The intimation is that a Robledo presidency would halt the free trade agreements with the USA, with Europe and with South Korea. Robledo’s contention is that Colombia would not benefit from the agreements: The inherent structural imbalance would lend foreign companies a major advantage over less well developed Colombian businesses.Robledo predicts a new era of colonialism, as bad, he suggests, as the era of Spanish rule. This fatalism is typical of the protectionist left.

In the article, Robledo also attacks Santos’ land restitution policy, and his judicial reform laws arguing in his characteristically colourful language, that the President is steering the country into the ‘abyss’.

As with many politicians of his colour, Robledo is hotter on what he is against than on what he is for. A clear and compelling plan for a workable alternative for the country is not – for this website, at least – immediately available for consideration.

But Robledo will not worry about that. For now his brand is one of opposition. Last year when university students went on strike in protest against President’s Santos proposed changes to the education system, Robledo became the flag bearer of their cause. With soaring anti-privitisation rhetoric, Robledo launched wave after wave of attack, eventually helping students to force the government to shelve the plans.  Robledo has long enjoyed cult status within certain parts of Colombian society.

In a Congress where over 90% of the politicians are members of the coalition government, Robledo stands out like a sore thumb of contrariness.

There is no point in pretending that Robledo is anything other than a long-shot for president in 2014. He is a politician that is best suited to opposition. There is no denying his eloquence or even his likability. But he is precisely the sort of leader the Colombian left needs to steer well clear of.

Petro’s election in Bogotá showed the way for his former Polo Democratic colleagues – move to the centre, or die. For the Colombian left to have a real chance in 2014 it must select the moderate (and experienced) Clara Lopez.

Robledo is a stalking horse, but one that provides a bit of colour to a Colombian political system where the odds are stacked hugely in favour of the ruling administration, and where opposition is often drowned out in a din of unanimity.

Category: Comment, Left wingers