June 6, 2005

Colombia’s Challenge from the Left

by Garry Leech

On June 2, Colombia’s center-left Polo Democrático Independiente (PDI) announced that Senator Antonio Navarro Wolff would be the party’s candidate for the 2006 presidential election. Navarro Wolff received the second-highest number of votes among all candidates in Colombia’s 2002 congressional elections. As one of Colombia’s most popular politicians, Navarro Wolff provides the center-left with its best opportunity to win the presidency in the country’s history. A PDI victory next year would bring Colombia in line with other South American nations that have taken a turn to the left in recent years. It would also likely lead to a shift in relations between Colombia and both the United States and Venezuela.

Navarro Wolff is a former commander of the leftist M-19 guerrilla group that demobilized in 1990. He came third in the 1993 presidential election as a candidate for the disbanded rebel group’s political party Democratic Alliance M-19. His popularity since then, however, has increased dramatically as illustrated by his vote tally in the 2002 congressional elections. If Colombia’s Constitutional Court rules later this year that President Alvaro Uribe’s reelection bid is unconstitutional, then Navarro Wolff could become the favorite to win the presidency. Even if the Court allows Uribe to run again, the PDI candidate promises to be a formidable opponent.

Navarro Wolff has been an outspoken critic of both U.S. policy in Colombia and President Uribe’s democratic security program, which has resulted in widespread human rights abuses. Consequently, a Navarro Wolff victory would likely lead to a reevaluation of Colombia’s relationship with the United States, particularly with regard to the U.S. military intervention in Colombia’s civil conflict under the rubric of the wars on drugs and terror.

Undoubtedly, the Bush and Uribe administrations will claim that a vote for Navarro Wolff is a vote for the guerrillas, or “terrorists.” But the PDI candidate has been critical of Colombia’s leftist guerrilla groups, calling on them to follow the M-19’s lead by entering into negotiations in order to demobilize. Navarro Wolff’s relations with the country’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), have not been good since the M-19 demobilized. In fact, in 1998, FARC leader Manuel Marulanda refused to meet with Navarro Wolff, stating: “We don’t need him here at the table to give us some clever proposals about how to get on one’s knees and grovel.”

A Navarro Wolff victory in next year’s election also promises a shift in Colombia’s often-rocky relationship with neighboring Venezuela. Both Navarro Wolff and the PDI, in contrast to President Uribe, have been sympathetic to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s social revolution. The PDI’s friendly relations with Chávez would likely leave the United States without a South American ally in its mission to isolate the Venezuelan leader.

Many Colombians are concerned that the Bush administration intends to use Colombia as a staging ground to undermine or overthrow the Chávez government. Such theories have played a prominent role in the current mayoral election campaign in the border city of Maicao in northern Colombia. PDI candidate Mara Ortega believes it is crucial that she defeat the Uribista candidate in order to diminish the influence of President Uribe, and by extension the Bush administration, in the largest Colombian city that borders Venezuela’s oil-rich state of Zulia. The vast oil reserves of Lake Maracaibo make Zulia strategically important to the United States. On a recent trip to Zulia, currently one of only two states controlled by the opposition, US Ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield angered many Venezuelans by suggesting that maybe the oil-rich state should secede.

A Navarro Wolff victory next year would not only allow Colombia to improve relations with neighboring Venezuela, it would also allow the country to play a more prominent role in the process of South American integration currently being championed by Venezuela and Brazil. In order to win the election, though, Navarro Wolff would first have to survive the campaign. Right-wing paramilitaries have assassinated many prominent leftist presidential candidates in the past, including another former M-19 leader Carlos Pizzaro in 1990.

While the PDI has had numerous electoral successes in recent years, including Luis Eduardo “Lucho” Garzon’s victory in Bogotá’s 2003 mayoral elections, a Navarro Wolff win would be the center-left’s biggest victory ever in Colombia. It would also change the political and military dynamic in a region the Bush administration considers to be of vital strategic importance.

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