By Ramiro Bejarano Guzmán, EL ESPECTADOR, March 6, 2021
https://www.elespectador.com/opinion/objetivo-la-jep/
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
Just as in the sinister times of the civilian dictatorships of Ospina Pérez and Laureano Gómez, we are living through new campaigns of hatred, like that which the Democratic Center Party (CD) and its most ferocious spokespeople are engineering.
Now the situation is riskier, because the far right has taken over key forums of information and public opinion. That didn’t happen even in the hateful conservative regimes of the ‘50’s. They have resuscitated “laureano-alvarism”, a sect whose principle dogma is converting a person with whose politics you disagree into a personal enemy, then annihilate, slander, defame, and criminalize him/her until the person is destroyed physically, and so make the “republic unlivable”, like in the deadly times of their chieftains and inspiration.
I’m not saying the foregoing only because of the disgraceful adventure that Attorney General Barbosa has traversed, making use of a judicial hit man like Gabriel Ramón Jaimes Durán, to argue the impossible to protect Uribe from the investigation in which the Supreme Court, unanimously, went in a different direction. The fact that I have professional responsibilities in the matter, as substitute attorney for Senator Iván Cepeda, means that I cannot ethically explore in public the details of this litigation. Because of that, I am barely able even to peek into the entrance of that carnival of errors they are crowing in order to express my dissident voice about what’s going on here, even with the assistance and applause of a number of communications media converted into couriers. By the way, I hope they have read the incendiary and threatening letter from CD to Noticias Caracol, only because it dared to report what that letter reveals about Uribe. The Uribista proposal to convince the country that they ought to continue their enjoyment and abuse of power is only based on the extermination of Juan Manuel Santos, Gustavo Petro, and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP). That’s the tripod that they think is the basis for upholding the democracy that they also have weakened.
It was infamous for María Fernanda Cabal, the lady whose every word drips with hatred, to promote a letter asking the Norwegian Committee to retire Juan Manuel Santos’ Nobel Prize, because the shameless Ñoño Elías shot off some fibs that he later could not prove or support. It’s not the first time that Ms. Cabal shows her proverbial ignorance and intolerance, because when Gabo died she committed him to Hell.
If the testimony of a convicted witness, entranced with seeking the benefit of a reduction in penalty, would be enough to get the Norwegian Committee to strip away the dignities it has awarded, the Uribe case would still be beyond pathetic, because there are not just one, but a whole lot of witnesses that would not speak well of him. But, it’s clear that the CD only read, in an incomplete and biased way, those parts of the proceedings where they think they might find errors by those who contradict him, and they pay no attention to the ones that are aware of the cesspools where they themselves are protagonists of the violence.
But if the attacks on Santos are demented, those that they have launched against Petro are not less so. The climate they have created against the former Mayor is concerning, because they seem disposed to do anything at all to collapse his presidential aspirations. The stone-throwing and premonitory “no holds barred” from José Antonio Montalvo, expressed in the prelude to Gaitán’s assassination still haunts, and now you can hear the sirens of the ones that are announcing that in no way will they ever permit Petro the temerity of setting foot in the “Casa de Nari” (President’s Palace).
The sinister Uribista tactic starts by weakening Santos and smearing his election as President; right away they stigmatize the Peace Agreement with the FARC as illegitimate, so that they can end up destroying the JEP that they fear so much, more now that Mancuso, Jorge 40, and others are going around asking for a place to tell what they know. When they were ready to do that before, they were immediately extradited.
We will see if they achieve the catastrophe that would happen if they were to take power without the embarrassment of the useless sub-President Duque and his heavy weight of discredit. For the good of Colombia’s future, we hope they don’t.
Addendum. Who is the evil adviser in the Presidential Palace that, making use of his closeness to Attorney General Barbosa, managed to promote or revive criminal investigations in order to pay off old grudges and personal antipathies?