One incident does not a pattern make, but history wasn’t too kind to the last head of state to throw imprudent words at investigative journalists from the Washington Post. One would that think Colombia’s President Uribe—usually an even-tempered individual not known for flying off the handle—would remember the old adage about those who ignore the past.
Scandal, or rumors thereof, have plagued Uribe’s entire political career. The most common allegations have involved alleged ties to Colombia’s infamous “paras”: right-wing death squads notorious for their ties to big business and the wealthy land-owning class. These paramilitary groups, often composed of moonlighting police and military personnel, kidnapped, tortured, massacred, and perpetrated the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of rural poor—often while working in concert with regular army troops.
It came as no real surprise, then, when last week the Washington Post ran a story implicating President Uribe’s brother, Santiago, in another instance of “parapolitica” (the Colombian term for the ties between politicians and the paras). According to a retired police major, Juan Carlos Meneses, Santiago led a group of paras known as “the 12 Apostles” that was responsible for at least 50 murders. Meneses—now living in Venezuela—is working with an argentine Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, who has threatened to bring the investigation to the international stage.
When first asked about the Post piece, the president responded that he didn’t read international newspapers. A scant few days later, he issued what can kindly be described as “a diatribe.” He defended his brother, expressing incredulity at “the ability of criminals to penetrate society,” including a “serious institution” like the Washington Post. The obvious implication is that extralegal influence is at play, either duping the Post’s reporters into being patsies or acting with the knowing collaboration of the paper’s staff. Neither is complimentary.
Furthermore, Uribe marveled at how the underworld “turn[ed] a Nobel Peace Prize winner into a useful idiot,” an oh-so-subtle stab at Pérez Esquivel.
Neither of these outbursts befit the President of Colombia, one of the most popular and respected heads of state in Latin America. Alvaro Uribe has made a name for himself as a firm, thoughtful, level-headed politician in a political stage where the spotlight is all-too-often held by vitriolic, frothing-at-the-mouth characters such as Manuel Zelaya, Hugo Chavez, and Evo Morales. These accusations wouldn’t seem out of place in Cuba’s Granma or Chavez’s daily soapbox, “Alo Presidente!” For someone who has gained prestige as the straight man of South America, they hardly reflect well upon him.
Send lawyers, guns and money,
J.
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