Political Ferment in Colombia
HOLT, PAT M.
Political Ferment in Colombia By Pat M. Holt Bogota Now that President Kennedy has come and gone, attention here has focused once again on Colombia's approaching crisis. The crisis is...
...For here, as in the rest of Latin America, there is no longer any question of whether there will be a social revolution...
...Although the gravity of the impending Colombian crisis should not be underestimated, neither should it be painted too darkly...
...The only question is what kind it will be...
...On October 11, following an abortive attempt at a pint-sized military uprising, the Government declared a state of siege...
...Ex-dictator Rojas has been making noises that suggest he is thinking of a comeback...
...The Presidency, being indivisible, is alternated between the parties...
...The "official" Liberals, the more numerous and moderate of the two wings, are led by Dr...
...Bogota also has one of the best organized overall economic planning offices in Latin America, and more attention is being paid to building schools and roads...
...The opposition Liberals have broken away from the party and formed the Liberal Revolutionary Movement (MRL...
...Of course, they can keep the coalition of Ospinista Conservatives and official Liberals from winning big...
...The principle saving feature in Colombia these days is the economy...
...They arise primarily from the peculiar constitutional provisions which were adopted following the overthrow of dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla in 1957...
...The Government's Agricultural Credit Bank is using its considerable resources to carry out land resettlement and colonization projects...
...But there are also signs on the Right: More and more members of the Colombian oligarchy are deciding that, once started, reform may get out of hand and that the best thing for them is to resist any change...
...an Ospinista Conservative backed by the official Liberals (together, these two groups make up the "national front" which now rules Colombia...
...The political aspects of the crisis are the most immediate and the most complicated...
...But while it is trying to keep the lid on with a state of siege, the Government is also trying to let out steam in a number of ways...
...Political feuding was so intense in the early 1950s that it opened the way to power for Rojas Pinilla...
...and instead of one political division, there are now two...
...What is more, Colombians have a highly developed talent for political compromise: After all, not every country could have thought up Colombia's constitutional provisions for party parity and Presidential alternation...
...These provisions were adopted to lessen Colombia's traditional inter-party strife...
...In almost every dispute affecting a union's bargaining position, or even its survival, the law favors the employer...
...This group is more Leftist in both domestic and foreign policies...
...In effect, this means that within a constitutional framework providing for two parties there are now four...
...Any group that is going to govern effectively, therefore, has to win big in March...
...But in recent years factions have developed within each party, and instead of conflict between the Liberals and the Conservatives, there is now strife between the two wings of the Liberal party and between the two wings of the Conservative party...
...Smuggling of arms and of more prosaic contraband such as cigarettes, whisky and ballpoint pens, is proceeding apace...
...This prospect alone would be grim enough, but it is made even more ominous by the urgency of the social problems facing Colombia...
...One major danger signal is the increasing ideological polarization of political forces...
...All this threatens to shatter the national front completely and lead to a repetition of the open warfare which existed ten years ago...
...Most of the strikes were over labor issues, such as union recognition and industry-wide bargaining...
...It has a labor reform bill in the initial stages...
...In recent months, however, the peso has weakened somewhat...
...Carlos Lieras Restrepos, a cousin of President Lieras...
...Congressional elections are to be held in March and Presidential elections in May...
...Since mid-summer, there has been a series of bitter strikes, frequently accompanied by violence, in Bogota and Cali...
...It is still dependent on coffee for 75 per cent of its foreign exchange...
...Its climax can be expected in the spring of 1962...
...Pat M. Holt, a freelancer living in Bogota, is a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs...
...Their solution demands a government which is both powerful enough to be effective and intelligent enough to be enlightened—in short, one which can move Colombia's social revolution along peacefully within democratic channels...
...The differences between the Liberal factions are more ideological...
...and an opposition Conservative who may be scratched if his faction takes a licking in March...
...The two Conservative factions, approximately equal in size, are divided mainly by personalities...
...As a result, Colombia's political Center, which has been generally moderate, liberal and enlightened, seems to be on the decline...
...The evidence is clearest on the Left, where the MRL is boisterous and uninhibited...
...Thus there will be four slates of candidates for the voters to choose from in the March Congressional elections, and there will probably be three Presidential candidates two months later: the MRL's Michelsen...
...it has already started...
...Constitutionally, the opposition Liberals cannot win in May, but they will try anyway...
...Colombia has a good diversified industrial base, exceeded in Latin America only by Argentina, Brazil and Mexico...
...Colombian laws, therefore, were written by members of the employer class—no matter to which party they belonged...
...If they receive the most votes, the MRL's leaders say, they will interpret that as a de facto expression of the popular will against the present Constitution, and will demand power...
...Evidence of the social revolution is everywhere apparent...
...The memory of the 1950s is still so fresh that most people here would go pretty far to avoid a repeat performance...
...In the countryside, there has been increasing impatience for agrarian reform...
...One group, the Ospinistas (named after their leader, former President Mariano Ospina Perez), supports the present Government...
...In the past, there have been few fundamental differences between the Liberal and Conservative parties...
...Despite the political uncertainties which have beset the country in the last decade, it has miraculously continued to grow at a rate equalling or approaching 5 per cent a year...
...The other, known as "doctrinaire" Conservatives or Laureanistas (after their leader, former President Laureano Gomez), does not, although it does support the constitutional provisions for party parity and alternation of the Presidency...
...The next logical step would be for the Army to feel that it must assume power to carry on the most elementary processes of government...
...Under the present Constitution, seats in Congress, the Departmental Assemblies and the Municipal Councils, as well as other elective offices, are divided equally between the two major political parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives...
...One begins to hear talk of shaken business confidence...
...There are indications that the violence Colombia suffered during the period 194857, which has never been totally suppressed, is beginning to flare once again...
...Since incumbent President Alberto Lieras Camargo is a Liberal, his successor must be a Conservative...
...The anti-labor tradition is now being challenged, in some cases successfully, by some of the smaller, more militant unions, so far without notable support from the big Colombian labor confederations but with a good deal of encouragement from the MRL...
...But thanks to reasonably stable coffee prices and to reasonably austere fiscal policies, the Lieras Camargo government has reduced the foreign debt it inherited from Rojas Pinilla to manageable proportions...
...The crisis is mainly political and partly social...
...Given a few years, all these measures can reasonably be expected to stimulate economic growth and to provide a better life for the urban laborer and, especially, for the rural peasant...
...The question is whether liberal reforms will be given a few years, or whether the problems they are designed to meet, combined with the country's political problems, will produce a major crisis in the spring of 1962...
...The Congressional elections are further complicated by a clause requiring that all bills be passed with a two-thirds majority in Congress...
...A comprehensive agrarian reform law, which could well become a model for many other Latin American countries, was signed into law early last month...
...Neither the Laureanista Conservatives nor the MRL can do this, because even if each of them won all the seats to which their party is entitled, they would still have no more than 50 per cent of the Congress...
...It opposes the principles of parity and alternation, and its leader, former President Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, has announced that he will run in the May elections despite the constitutional requirement that the next President be a Conservative...
Vol. 45 • January 1962 • No. 1
