By Camilo A. Castillo, EL TIEMPO, July 11, 2024
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Voluntary Translator)
The Head of State returned to subjects like express administrative purchase of parcels of land, necessary investments, and extending the deadline for implementation. How politic was his speech in that setting?
In his first appearance before the United Nations Security Council since his inauguration, President Gustavo Petro suggested reviving the “fast track” for “changing regulations” and accelerating the implementation of the 2016 Peace Agreement. These methods have previously been used to process the legal and constitutional reforms that were agreed upon in Havana. In a speech that lasted nearly 40 minutes and in which he tried to talk about the “obstacles” to accomplishment of the commitments agreed upon by the Santos administration and the now-defunct FARC, the President suggested eight points that would, in his view, finish up what’s left unfinished, and he spoke of the necessity of a “national agreement” to specify the legal changes he is proposing.
“I’m going to propose to the whole society, to Congress and to the Courts, that we repeat a ‘fast track’, a more rapid method for approving regulation in the Congress, as was done before, but the bills from that time, in the Juan Manuel Santos administration, had to do with the initial phases of the Agreement, and now we have to introduce changes in the regulations that will allow the products of the Peace Agreement: rural reform, the complete truth, and integrating the countryside into the development of the nation,” said the President during the quarterly report on Colombia that he was making before the UN Security Council.
To explain his proposal, President Petro pointed out that the Agreement, because compliance with it is obligatory, “requires a social concordance in order to find regulations that can be changed if current regulations are not facilitating implementation of the Agreement.” Some of the proposals he suggested are not new and have already been suggested in other settings.
For example, he talked about an agricultural reform that would contain modification of current regulations on rapid administrative purchase of parcels of land, a subject that has been associated with the controversial article “expropriation express”, included in the National Development Plan. “The current law prohibits us, it leaves it to judges that can take decades before a fertile farm which is not being planted at all now can be turned over to campesinos. If we don’t change that, it will take 50 years to carry out the Peace Agreement,” he said, and went on to suggest the transformation of the National Land Agency into an entity that could structure productive projects through access to credit.
“I think it’s indecent to lie to the country about the expropriation express proposal that didn’t allow me to be involved with the National Development Plan, but the moment I was out, they tried to do that themselves,” said former Minister Cecilia López about that proposal, and she added, “Administrative expropriation does exist, and it respects the Constitution and due process. Expropriation express doesn’t exist in Colombia’s legal system. And it’s not the same thing to expropriate for public projects as to expropriate in order to turn a land parcel over to a campesino.”
In the same way, she suggested things like necessary investments to promote productive substitutions for the illegal economies and to accelerate the work of the Crop Substitution Program and releasing the growers of coca from imprisonment. President Petro admitted that one of the points that is lagging the most is No. 4, related to the definitive solution to the problem of illegal drugs. “If we construct a plan, I’m going to call it the Marshall Plan, for investments in areas where the greatest amount of cocaine in the world is being produced, we can close off the supply. The campesino wants to produce cacao,” he said.
In the same manner, President Petro talked about modifying the regulations to take effect in the future, and the mid-range fiscal plan for financing for “including the countryside in development”, one of the three points that Petro believes to be the main idea of the Agreement, along with rural reform and the complete judicial truth.
Laura Bonilla, the Assistant Director of the Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation (Pares in Spanish) stated that this modification is necessary in order to be able to promote infrastructure projects in the regions prioritized in the Agreement. “The authorization of funds for the future and the financial plan are two of the bottlenecks of the peace, and that explains why we have not been able to invest in the countryside and are ending up doing training projects when in reality it’s infrastructure projects that are needed,” she said. She added that right now, “it’s not easy to direct funding for the General System of Participations to the Mayors’ Offices and to the municipalities so that they can have the most efficient ways to implement the Agreement, and this could help.”
She went further and suggested that the deadline for completion of implementation of the Peace Agreement and the existence of the 16 Colombian Participatory Development Program (PDET in Spanish) subregions—the areas most damaged by the violence—be extended for seven more years, that’s to say, at least until 2038.
For Enrique Prieto-Ríos, professor of international law at Rosario University, that last proposal is not as crazy as it sounds, considering the current state of the implementation. “I see that as doable. One of the principal objectives of the UN tends to be maintaining international peace and security, and they also realize that internal conflicts can escalate rapidly to regional conflicts, so that extending the deadline would be part of carrying out those objectives,” he said.
To kick off the investments in those areas there would have to be a change in the General System of Participations that would allow funding for projects that advance health, education, infrastructure, and the concept known as “hereditary concessions” in the jungle areas. “We need two hundred billon pesos (roughly USD $50,660,220,000.00 at current exchange rates) to do the implementation,” added Petro.
Petro went back to an old proposal, creating a single system of truth, justice, reparations, and reconciliation for all of the actors in the conflict. “It’s the only way to put an end to the conflict,” he said, adding that there was even some room for the drug trafficking organizations. Besides that, President Petro stated that he doesn’t have the funds necessary to carry out the 2016 Peace Agreement, and he added that it would cost 200 billón pesos (roughly USD $50,660,220,000 at current exchange rates) to accomplish the implementation.
Another question that remained after the President’s speech was how appropriate it was to present these proposals, many of which have to do with subjects that could touch on Colombia’s constitution, in an international setting.
“When the Peace Agreement was signed, the United Nations Security Council, by resolution, created a system in which the United Nations monitors the peace process,” said Prieto-Ríos.
For analyst Pedro Medellín, on the contrary, this speech was “neither customary nor politic. We have to remember that the one who used to attend these meetings, representing the government, was the Foreign Minister of the moment. “Although the President, as Head of State, is the one who has to lead in taking the actions necessary to comply with this Agreement, this is not the occasion to talk about changes that have to do with such profound reforms” he said.
“I agree with much of what other actors have had to say. Retaking the line of the Santos administration on the matter of drugs, that stands out because it’s a proposal that would come up in a new legislative session and with changes in the cabinet. It’s a subject that could be positive, but you have to read the proposals carefully,” said Manuel Alejandro Rayran, an internationalist and a professor at Externado University, on the subject of the President’s speech.
In conclusion, President Petro asked the Security Council to create an international mission to support the Attorney General’s investigation to identify those responsible for murdering the former FARC combatants, and to halt the resurgence of “neoparamilitary groups”.