COLOMBIA-US:
Fight Over Trade Deal Is
On
By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA (IPS) -
Although the Democratic
Party has made it clear
that it will oppose the
free trade agreement
with Colombia, President
George W. Bush sent the
trade deal Tuesday to
the U.S. Congress, which
now has 90 working days
to vote on it.
Analysts in Colombia say
the stakes are high
because if the trade
deal, which was signed
16 months ago by the two
governments, is not
passed now, it will
collapse, or at the very
least will take several
years to be approved.
This is the first time
since fast-track
negotiating authority,
now known as Trade
Promotion Authority, was
created in 1975 that a
U.S. administration has
introduced a bill that
is opposed by the party
that controls Congress.
Under fast track
authority, the House of
Representatives has 60
working days and the
Senate another 30 days
to approve or reject the
bill, without making any
amendments or blocking a
vote.
When asked by
journalists about the
risk Bush is taking by
submitting the free
trade agreement to
Congress, Colombian
Minister of Trade,
Industry and Tourism
Luis Guillermo Plata
said he supported the
move and added that it
is Bush "who knows how
U.S. politics work."
"The free trade
agreement is a national
priority," Plata
underlined.
The Colombia issue has
been installed in the
U.S. election campaign
as a result of Bush’s
argument that as long as
the left-leaning Hugo
Chávez governs
Venezuela, the alliance
with rightwing President
Álvaro Uribe in Colombia
is a question of
"national security."
Republican candidate
John McCain has already
declared his support for
the free trade agreement
(FTA), while Democratic
hopefuls Senator Barack
Obama and Senator
Hillary Rodham Clinton
are both opposed to the
deal.
Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid said that "By
sending up the Colombia
FTA legislation under
circumstances that
maximise the chances it
will fail, (Bush) will
be adding one more
mistake to his legacy".
Democrats argue that the
FTA will hurt job
stability in certain
sectors of the U.S.
economy, that killings
of trade unionists and
the lack of labour
rights in Colombia are
still a serious problem,
and that the South
American country’s lax
environmental
regulations would mean
products from that
country would have cheap
entry to the U.S.
market, making it
difficult for local
producers to compete.
Analysts say that by
playing the national
security card, Bush will
force the Democrats to
decide whether or not
the Uribe administration
is a key Washington
ally, in a region where
leftwing and centre-left
governments have been
voted into office in
most countries and both
the United States and
Colombia are
increasingly isolated.
But if the Democrats
vote in favour of the
FTA, they stand to lose
crucial support from
U.S. trade unions.
Senator Clinton’s
campaign has been
directly affected by the
issue. Until Sunday,
Mark Penn, the CEO of
the public relations
firm Burson-Marsteller,
was Clinton’s chief
campaign strategist.
The Colombian government
had hired
Burson-Marsteller for
300,000 dollars a year
to lobby U.S. lawmakers
to vote in favour of the
FTA and continued
financial support for
the Plan Colombia
counterinsurgency
strategy.
But Penn resigned from
Clinton’s campaign after
The Wall Street Journal
reported last Friday
that he had met with
Colombian Ambassador
Carolina Barco.
While one of the
arguments set forth by
Clinton in her
opposition to the FTA is
the violation of labour
rights in Colombia, Penn
is an adviser to
corporations like Coca
Cola, which is facing
legal action in
connection with the
murders of trade
unionists in its
bottling plants in
Colombia.
Rafael Rincón, director
of the Oficina háBeas
Corpus, a consultancy on
rights and governance in
the northwestern city of
Medellín, said Penn
advises companies "on
union-busting and the
undermining of labour
rights."
When the conflict of
interests was revealed,
Penn apologised for his
meeting with Ambassador
Barco, which he called
"an error in judgment".
Saying Penn’s reaction
showed a "lack of
respect" for Colombians,
the Uribe administration
then terminated its
contract with
Burson-Marsteller.
"Colombia has become a
‘hot potato’ in
Washington. Bush says
the FTA is a question of
national security, just
as he described Iraq
five years ago," said
Rincón.
The analyst also said
"the Penn scandal has
made it clear that
Colombia’s foreign
policy is based on the
trafficking of
influences" and "is
reduced to war
lobbying."
Observers say that if
the FTA fails to make it
through the U.S.
Congress, the economic
slowdown that some
experts already forecast
for Colombia as of 2012
is bound to be blamed on
the lack of a free trade
deal.
Former cabinet minister
Mauricio Cárdenas, who
is now head of
Fedesarrollo, says that
without the FTA,
investment in Colombia
will begin to fall off,
starting in 2009, and
annual economic growth
will be half a
percentage point lower.
Over the last year,
Ambassador Barco,
advised by
Burson-Marsteller, has
organised
all-expenses-paid trips
to Colombia for more
than 50 U.S.
legislators, in an
effort to convince them
to vote for the FTA.
On Monday, Barco
acknowledged that
articles and editorials
published in the U.S.
press over the past
year, that were
favourable to the
Colombian government and
argued for approval of
the FTA, were a result
of Burson-Marsteller’s
lobbying efforts.
Bush, meanwhile, argued
Monday that "President
Uribe has done
everything asked of
him." "In discussions
about the Colombia free
trade agreement, some
members of Congress have
raised concerns about
the conditions in
Colombia. President
Uribe has addressed
these issues. He's
addressed violence by
demobilising tens of
thousands of
paramilitary figures and
fighters. "He's
addressed attacks on
trade unionists by
stepping up funding for
prosecutions,
establishing an
independent prosecutors
unit, and creating a
special programme that
protects labour
activists. He's made
clear that the economic
benefits the agreement
brings to Colombia would
strengthen the fight
against drugs and
terror, by creating a
more hopeful alternative
for the people of
Colombia. "If this isn't
enough to earn America's
support, what is?" Bush
asked. But despite
several significant
measures that have
brought about, for
example, a drop in the
number of kidnappings,
11 trade unionists have
been murdered so far
this year in Colombia,
according to the
president of the Central
Unitaria de Trabajadores
(CUT) central trade
union, Carlos Rodríguez.
And in the six years
since Uribe first took
office, over 400 labour
activists have been
murdered, the Escuela
Nacional Sindical
(National Trade Union
School) has reported.
Since the killings of
trade unionists began in
the 1980s, only three
percent have been
clarified. Colombia is
the most dangerous
country in the world for
labour organisers.
Bush also failed to
mention the findings of
the U.S. State
Department, which said
in its latest report
that the number of
extrajudicial killings
of civilians by the
Colombian security
forces has gone up.
A coalition of Colombian
human rights groups has
documented 955 murders
of civilians by the
armed forces since
Uribe’s first term began
in August 2002. And the
number of such killings
was 10 percent higher in
2007 than in 2006.
Furthermore, as
paramilitary chief
Salvatore Mancuso
himself admitted last
weekend in an interview
from jail, the
demobilised
paramilitaries are
rearming themselves.
Prior to the rearming,
which began late last
year, and in the midst
of a unilateral
ceasefire declared by
the far-right
paramilitary militias in
December 2002, the
groups committed at
least 3,530 murders and
forced disappearances up
to June 30, 2007,
according to the
Colombian Commission of
Jurists, a human rights
organisation.
Nor has Uribe’s all-out
offensive against the
leftist guerrillas kept
them from killing and
"disappearing" 1,805
people in nearly the
same time period (July
2002 through June 2007),
as the U.S.-based Latin
America Working Group
Education Fund reported
Monday. |
