With poverty and unemployment surging, discontent could return. Colombia's president should emulate one of his most successful predecessors
to find in the recent history of the West a democratic state confronted with such serious threats as Colombia was in the mid-1980s.” So writes Malcolm Deas, a British historian, in a biography published last year of Virgilio Barco, the country’s president from 1986 to 1990. Colombia had the world’s highest murder rate, as Pablo Escobar and his drug-trafficking friends ran amok, slaughtering judges, journalists and ministers.
Mr Duque, who is sponsored by Mr Uribe, has seen his approval rating rise from 23% in February to 52% in April. Yet he would be rash to relax. Peace has allowed new aspirations: mass protests last year focused on better education and pensions. But Colombia’s progress has all but halted since the peace agreement, and in some ways before that. Many crucial issues, from judicial reform to tackling corruption, have been shirked.
Some of Mr Duque’s opponents accuse him, in part unfairly, of failing to implement the peace agreement. “The big complaint is not peace, it’s security,” says a former defence official. “It’s what they were supposed to be good at.” The peace agreement offered the chance to shrink the army, expand the police and concentrate on bringing the rule of law to rural areas. Instead, Mr Duque’s government has allowed the army to become politicised, and has failed to exercise civilian oversight of it.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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