Although there is uncertainty about the ability of the FARC dissidents to guarantee a comprehensive ceasefire, which was strengthened militarily and territorially due to the appeasement policy of President Petro’s government, we appreciate that the first agreements have been reached. Although it does not operate in our department or on the Caribbean coast, we do know of its presence in the bordering department of Norte de Santander, Catatumbo region. In fact, it was in this place where the meeting of the national government and its negotiators with the self-proclaimed Central General Staff of the FARC took place.
These agreements are in addition to those being developed with the ELN, which will advance a set of dialogues with civil society until May 2025. And then we will enter the period of tough negotiations on the essential elements of peace and the definitive ceasefire.
Pending is the treatment that will be given to groups such as the Clan del Golfo, or self-proclaimed Gaitanista self-defense groups, subject to legislation, currently in the making, that allows adequate submission. It has been suggested that a formula similar to that of ‘Justice and Peace’ that was advanced in the past with the united self-defense groups (paramilitaries) could be approached.
We hope that all these efforts are crystallized because we consider that the main national problem is violence. It is enough for the legacy of the Petro government that, once the desire for reforms has been abandoned, the so-called Total Peace is signed, perfected and developed.
That is the first purpose of this martyred nation to set an example to other nations and save blood and pain to its compatriots; before attempting to become, with the most plausible purposes, spokespersons for peace causes in conflicts such as those between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Palestine, as Petro maintained at the United Nations.
And of falling into a fragile leadership, which omits to censor the violent actions of others. This is what has happened in the case of the massacre of the radical Palestinian movement Hamas against hundreds of defenseless people, among them, a Colombian couple and dozens of Latin Americans in Israel, and about which the writer Enrique Santos Calderón in his column in the magazine Cambio states:
“The false start of President Petro is regrettable, which taints Colombia’s foreign policy. Not only did he not frankly condemn the massacre, but he made an absurd comparison of the Gaza Strip with the Auschwitz concentration camp, where Nazism coldly and methodically exterminated 1.2 million people, 900,000 of them Jews. An offense for the State of Israel and its people that not even a thousand tweets of presidential rectification will erase. Although it will not occur either.”
The president should not be an opinion analyst or a tireless agitator of causes on social networks around the world, but rather a head of state who represents all Colombians. Not even Israel’s probably disproportionate legitimate defense action in Gaza, with thousands of Palestinian deaths, will erase the mistake.
