Posted on 06/27/2002 2:54:02 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
BOGOTA, Colombia -- Extending a blackmail campaign to every town and city in Colombia, left-wing guerrillas have threatened to kidnap or execute all mayors and municipal judges who refuse to quit by today.
"This puts Colombia's democracy in checkmate," said Luis Perez, mayor of Medellin, the nation's second-largest city.
A commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, issued the threat late Tuesday during an interview with Reuters. He said the nation's 1,097 mayors and all its municipal judges must step down by midnight Wednesday as the rebels press their monthlong crusade to drive out local officials.
"The government has declared total war against us, and our response is to politically disregard the state, its representatives and its laws," said the leader of the FARC's 51st front, who is known as "Byron."
"A new grass-roots power must be built by the people," he said from an isolated mountain region just south of Bogota, the Colombian capital. "The birth of this new power will not recognize old institutions."
Gilberto Toro, president of the Colombian Federation of Municipalities, believes the latest threat reflects the thinking of the FARC's ruling secretariat, which has gone into hiding since peace talks with President Andres Pastrana's government broke down in February.
"It's arrogant and absurd," Toro said Wednesday, adding that the vast majority of municipal workers will probably stay on the job. "It shows that the FARC has gone crazy."
Last month, the FARC, Colombia's largest guerrilla army, began threatening mayors and other municipal workers in two southern states, saying they would be killed unless they quit working.
As fearful mayors abandoned their posts, the rebels extended the order to other regions. On Tuesday, the FARC's powerful eastern bloc issued a communique calling for the ouster of municipal officials in 10 additional states, an order that included city workers in Bogota. Tuesday night, FARC commander Byron insisted that municipal workers nationwide must quit.
The result is what analysts have called the FARC's most devastating assault on civilian authorities since the nation's guerrilla war began in the 1960s.
About 140 mayors, including 22 on Wednesday, have announced their intention to resign. Hundreds of judges, city council members, secretaries and police inspectors have also stopped working after receiving FARC threats, Toro said.
Some mayors have fled to provincial capitals, where they try to run their towns by telephone. But Byron, the FARC commander, promised that they, too, would be targeted unless they stop working altogether.
In Washington, Cesar Gaviria, secretary-general of the Organization of American States, sharply condemned the FARC strategy, saying that "any threats to kill these and other public officials are very serious acts of terrorism."
On Wednesday, Anne Patterson, Washington's ambassador to Colombia, offered to provide endangered mayors with armored vehicles and bulletproof vests.
Eight Colombian mayors have been killed this year, including one who was gunned down by the FARC earlier this month after failing to meet a deadline to quit.
Most of the nation's mayors remained on the job as of late Wednesday, but many were taking extra precautions.
Bogota Mayor Antanas Mockus, who along with the capital's city council, has been threatened by the FARC, has upgraded his security and scaled back public appearances.
Earlier this week, President Pastrana pleaded with mayors to stay the course and noted that resignations cannot be accepted if they are the product of coercion. He suggested that municipal officials run their towns from military installations and announced that the national government will provide mayors with bodyguards.
But Pastrana rejected calls to declare a "state of internal commotion," which would allow the national government to restrict civil rights, levy new taxes and appoint military mayors to the most troubled towns.
"If a state of commotion were the solution, we would have decreed it long ago," Pastrana said.
In an editorial Wednesday, the Bogota newspaper El Tiempo charged that Pastrana has avoided taking emergency measures because they might be construed by the international community as anti-democratic and stain his image as a statesman who tried to make peace with the guerrillas.
Pastrana, who leaves office Aug. 7, spent most of his four-year term seeking a peace accord with the FARC. He went so far as to create a rebel haven in southern Colombia as a site for the negotiations.
But the talks broke down in February, and government troops moved back into the rebel zone. Since then, the FARC, which has about 17,000 foot soldiers, has gone on the offensive, attacking army troops, setting off car bombs in cities, kidnapping legislators and threatening mayors.
Perez, the mayor of Medellin, said drastic times require more drastic measures than what the Pastrana government has proposed.
"What could be worse than a country without mayors?" he said.
Many analysts believe the FARC wants to erase all traces of government from hundreds of towns in order to create a power vacuum, then move in and take control. With more territory under its domain, experts say, the rebel group would be in a stronger position should the Colombian government reopen peace negotiations. "It's a very sophisticated strategy," said Vicente Torrijos, who teaches political science at Rosario University in Bogota, the nation's capital. "What's at stake are the conditions under which a new round of peace talks will be held."
President Andres Pastrana's government is pleading with mayors to stay put, offering them flak jackets, escorts and armored cars. His administration says it cannot accept resignations of public officials coerced by guerrillas at gunpoint. Even so, a domino effect appears to be taking hold. The rebel strategy has proved so effective in the south that the FARC last week extended decrees to parts of Arauca, Cesar and Bolivar states in northern Colombia.
At the Huila state government building in Neiva, an official said she has received letters of resignation from seven of that state's 37 mayors. Moments after she spoke, a nervous mayor burst into the room to announce that he, too, intends to abandon his post. "I have to," said Gentil Bahamon, mayor of the village of Suaza. "Besides, all my employees have resigned, so how can I work?"
Ever since the popular election of local officials began in Colombia in the early 1990s, small-town mayors have come under pressure from the guerrillas, who often outnumber police and army troops in isolated regions. During the electoral campaign two years ago, for example, the FARC met with scores of mayoral candidates to recommend rebel collaborators for city jobs and to demand payoffs from municipal budgets. Over the past 18 months, 14 mayors have been killed and 16 others kidnapped.
Last month, the guerrillas abruptly switched tactics when they began to issue expulsion orders. In some towns, they ordered only mayors to quit. Elsewhere, they told all civil servants to either resign or to simply stop working. "The mayors are bowing to the rebel warnings, because they know that these people are capable of killing them," Toro said. "This could generate an unprecedented institutional crisis, which is what the FARC wants."***
It is boiling over.
This is worrisome being neighbors with Colombia. The only positive thing I see is that the United States is not going to let these terrorists too near the Panama Canal. I do see things getting nasty in the future for Panama.
Good afternoon Gatún, it doesn't look good. Perhaps someone can pull a rabbit out of a hat.
Someone could plug Bill Clinton's nose.
The threats have forced city governments to close their doors, and on Thursday prompted the national government to increase rewards for information leading to the capture of FARC leaders.
President Andres Pastrana announced during a nationally broadcast speech that the government would pay $2 million for information leading to the capture of the highest-ranking FARC commanders and $1 million for battalion leaders. Previously, the government had offered a little more than $400,000 for the most important commanders. Pastrana said the government was going to ''seek out and punish the terrorists, one by one, wherever they are.'' In a country where the annual minimum wage is approximately $1,675, the rewards are staggering.
''This is a tempting offer for peasants or even for guerrilla members,'' said Sabas Pretelt de la Vega, president of the national Merchant's Federation. He said many FARC leaders travel openly in the countryside they control, and even appear in villages occasionally. ''They can't do that anymore,'' he said.
In Cali, authorities were searching for the people who ordered the killing of Arango as he left church Thursday night. Police arrived at the church shortly afterward and shot a man dead. Cali's police chief, General Luis Alfredo Rodriguez, said police had shot the assassin, but relatives of the priest told Radionet that police killed Arango's nephew, who was standing nearby but was not involved in the attack. Bishop Libardo Ramirez of nearby Huila State said Arango's murder ''hurts our hearts.'' In April, a priest was shot and killed as he delivered Holy Communion in Huila State.
''With these deaths they want to sow panic,'' he said. ''These violent people don't feel the pain of the communities, of the families, of the church itself that has done so much to try to reach peace.'' National church leaders met with police yesterday to discuss security measures for all priests, but declined to give details. [End]
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