¿Puede el Procurador destituir congresistas?

¿Puede el Procurador General de la Nación destituir congresistas? Se puede decir de todo acerca del Procurador Alejandro Ordóñez menos que ha no trabaja duro y con dedicación. Hasta los que no estamos de acuerdo con sus marcado énfasis en la religión católica le reconocemos el esmero que pone en su labor.

Hasta ahora, quizás la más conocida de las decisiones tomadas por Ordóñez fue la de destituir a la ex-senadora Piedad Córdoba por vínculos con las Farc, sancionándola a no poder ejercer cargos públicos por 18 años. Cuando destituyeron a Córdoba, la ex-senadora y su defensa trajeron un argumento válido a la mesa. Según ellos, Ordóñez se había abrogado las funciones exclusivas del Consejo de Estado, que por Constitución es el único que puede acabar con la investidura de los congresistas. Sin embargo, ese argumento no llevó muy lejos a la defensa de Córdoba, y la semana pasada el Procurador sancionó por segunda vez a un congresista, esta vez por cargos de corrupción (Germán Olano, por el Carrusel de la Contratación en Bogotá). Ahora, Ordóñez ha llamado a audiencia pública al también congresista Iván Moreno, hermano del alcalde de Bogotá Samuel Moreno, por su aparente implicación en el mismo Carrusel. Es posible que Ordóñez, por tercera vez, termine destituyendo a un congresista.

Ahora bien, ¿de dónde sale el poder del Procurador para destituir a los miembros de la rama legislativa nacional? ¿Existe en la Constitución un artículo que le otorgue al Procurador la facultad de remover del cargo a los representantes y senadores elegidos por el pueblo de Colombia?

Es posible.

El Artículo 278 le da al Procurador la facultad de "desvincular del cargo... al funcionario público que infrin[ja] de manera manifiesta la Constitución o la ley." Así pues, parece que la facultad del Procurador con respecto a los congresistas depende de la definición de funcionario público.

El Título V, Capítulo II de la Constitución habla "De la Función Pública." El Artículo 123 dice: "son servidores públicos los miembros de las corporaciones públicas, los empleados y trabajadores del Estado y de sus entidades descentralizadas territorialmente y por servicios."

Esto nos lleva a preguntarnos si el Senado, la Cámara y las comisiones son corporaciones públicas o no.

Frecuentemente los congresistas hablan de estas instituciones como "la corporación," y de hecho, así parece referirse a ellas la Constitución en el Art. 145, hablando del quórum: Artículo 145. "El Congreso pleno, las Cámaras y sus comisiones sólo podrán tomar[] [decisiones] con la asistencia de la mayoría de los integrantes de la respectiva corporación..."

Así pues, el hilo lógico conductor parece llevarnos al siguiente silogismo. 1) El Procurador puede destituir funcionarios públicos (Art. 278), 2) Los funcionarios públicos son los miembros de las corporaciones públicas (Art. 123), 3) el Senado, la Cámara y sus comisiones son corporaciones públicas (ver Art. 145). Por lo tanto, los miembros del Senado y Cámara (i.e., congresistas) son funcionarios públicos. Ergo, el Procurador puede destituir congresistas.

Parece un argumento bastante fácil.

Sin embargo, aquí es donde entra la defensa de Piedad Córdoba (señora, que sabrán, no es de mis afectos). El Artículo 184 establece que la "pérdida de investidura de Congresistas será decretada por el Consejo de Estado de acuerdo con la ley." Es por esto que la ex-senadora interpuso un recurso (horriblemente llamado "súplica" en jerga legal) ante el Consejo de Estado para tumbar la decisión del Procurador. Vale decir que el texto de ese artículo parece ser muy claro en que el decreto de pérdida de investidura de los congresistas es competencia del Consejo de Estado.

Cuando Córdoba radicó su "súplica," el Presidente del Consejo de Estado sólo atinó a decir que mientras el magistrado encargado llegaba a su decisión, Córdoba debía separarse del congreso. Es decir, la decisión de la Procuraduría se mantiene hasta que el Consejo de Estado decida tumbarla. Ese proceso podría tomar dos años, así que sólo sería hasta finales de 2012 que se tendría una sentencia del Consejo de Estado explicando si el Procurador puede o no puede destituir congresistas. Por ahora, parece que seguirá haciéndolo.

Addendum: Si el Consejo de Estado falla en contra del Procurador, lo más probable es que Córdoba deba recibir remuneración económica por su destitución contra derecho. Además, quizás se pondría en entredicho la sanción por 18 años, si es que el Consejo de Estado también falla que el Procurador no tiene facultades para sancionar congresistas de esa manera. Así pues, Córdoba podría volver a ejercer cargos públicos después de 2012 bajo ese escenario. Igual para el señor Olano y los otros congresistas que sean destituidos por el Procurador.

Correlación entre Salario Mínimo y Desempleo en Colombia 1990-2007

Hace tiempo que no escribo. He estado bastante ocupado y dejé de lado el blog por unos meses. Hoy decidí subir esta nueva entrada, porque creo que encontré algo interesante.

Estoy convencido de que una de las razones de las altas tasas de desempleo en Colombia es el monto del salario mínimo. El salario mínimo, además de todas las regulaciones atadas a él (pagos de cesantías, salud, parafiscales, subsidio de transporte, pensión, etc.), hacen que el costo del trabajo formal en Colombia sea excesivamente alto para que la economía pueda generar suficientes puestos de trabajo para todos. Pueden ver aquí otro artículo mío al respecto.

Para hacerle un test a esta hipótesis (apoyada además por muchos economistas colombianos) decidí buscar datos sobre el salario mínimo legal en el país desde 1990 y compararlos con las tasas de desempleo para buscar correlacion entre los dos. No tomé los datos netos sobre salario mínimo. Para tener en cuenta el tamaño de la economía, miré además el ingreso per cápita en Colombia desde 1990 y dividí para saber qué tan grande era el salario mínimo en relación al PIB per cápita en cada uno de esos años (salario mínimo / PIB per cápita).

Esta tabla muestra los datos que obtuve. Las fuentes son el Banco de la República (PIB pc y desempleo) y el Ministerio de Protección Social (salario mínimo). Sólo obtuve datos hasta 2007.

La siguiente gráfica muestra la correlación entre las dos variables "Salario Mínimo / PIB pc" y "Desempleo"

La gráfica muestra tasas más altas de desempleo en los años en los que el salario mínimo fue mayor en relación al ingreso per cápita, mostrando coherencia con la hipótesis que expliqué anteriormente. El R^2 de 0.65 muestra que hay una correlación bastante alta entre las dos variables (1 es igual a correlación perfecta).

Esta gráfica tiene las siguientes limitaciones: 1) correlación no significa causalidad. Dos eventos pueden estar correlacionados entre sí sin tener ningún tipo de conexión causa-efecto. Debido a que Colombia experimentó altas tasas de desempleo a finales de los 90 y comienzos de siglo (debido a una grave crisis económica) la correlación entre salarios mínimos más altos con respecto al ingreso medio y el desempleo puede ser pura coincidencia. 2) el tamaño de la muestra es muy pequeño para sacar conclusiones sólidas. 18 puntos no son suficientes. 3) la correlación puede ser explicada a la inversa, es decir que serían las tasas de desempleo las que terminarían explicando mayores salarios mínimos, lo cual es perfectamente posible. El gobierno pudo haber decidido incrementar el salario mínimo agresivamente en épocas de crisis económica para estimular la demanda, y 4) esta correlación no tiene en cuenta los efectos que el tiempo tiene sobre los datos, sino que los trata como puntos independientes. Sin duda, una regresión más sofisticada sería una herramienta mucho mejor para poner a prueba la relación entre estas variables.

A pesar de estas limitaciones, se puede afirmar que, por lo menos, los datos entre 1990 y 2007 no están en contra de la hipótesis de que salarios mínimos más altos han afectado negativamente la tasa de empleo en Colombia. Al contrario, este análisis superficial parece corroborar esa intuición. Obviamente, si la correlación fuera a la inversa (menores salarios mínimos igual a mayor desempleo), la hipótesis tendría que ser revisada.

Under Santos, there will be no honeymoon with Venezuela

Recently, an act of collective delusion, or collective wishful thinking, rather, has been taking place in Colombia. Ever since Juan Manuel Santos was elected president, media pundits and politicians have been talking about the hope of improving relations with Venezuela.

Headlines here and there announce a series of “positive messages” from the government of Hugo Chavez to Colombia, emphasizing that the Venezuelan autocrat promises “sincerity and respect”toward Mr. Santos’ administration. Mr. Chavez even wished the president-elect “success in the exercise of his new responsibility”, and agreed to “shake his hand” if it came to that.

The most optimistic have interpreted these words as good omens for relations between the two countries. The appointment of the competent Maria Angela Holguin to the Ministry of Foreign Relations has also lifted the hopes of those who want to see the quarrels with Venezuela as something of the past. Ms. Holguin, who was ambassador to Venezuela under President Uribe, is seen as someone who could play an important role in fixing the diplomatic channel with that country. Perhaps, with some help, Mr. Chavez is willing to leave all the past grudges behind and to start anew with Colombia.

Of course, all that is humbug. Every time I read another article insinuating that there could be reconciliation between the two countries, I laugh on the inside. Why on earth would anyone think that President Chavez and President Santos could have a frictionless relationship? Not so long ago, Mr. Chavez called Mr. Santos a “threat to the region”, warning that his election “could lead to war” with Colombia. The Venezuelan leader has also pointed out that “there will not be trade [with Colombia] if Santos is president”. But the disgust is mutual. It suffices to say that in 2004, Mr. Santos wrote an article for Revista Diners, in which he referred to the Venezuelan president as a man “with social resentments” and maintained that Venezuelan “democracy has been kidnapped by Hugo Chavez.” Mr. Santos finished his article by stating that “the Bolivarian deliria of Chavez represent a serious danger for Colombia.”

So why, all of a sudden, are there people saying that the two countries can mend their relationship? Has Mr. Chavez out of the blue become the statesman he has never been, one who can respect the leaders and the policies of other nations regardless of their ideology? Has President-elect Santos forgotten that the Venezuelan autocrat is a man who has helped Colombian terrorists and who would gladly do anything in his power to further their communist cause? Needless to say, the answer to both questions is "no." Nothing has changed, the two men still cannot stand each other, and the relationship between Colombia and Venezuela will continue to be as bad as it has been in the past year.

To believe otherwise is simply naïve. President Chavez will continue to further his Bolivarian revolution at home and abroad. This goes directly against the plans that President-elect Santos has for Colombia, a country that he intends to keep on the same track that President Uribe placed it on. Furthermore, there is the question of trade between the two nations. Nobody in Bogota will consider that relations have improved until there is a normalization of commerce, which means that President Chavez would have to lift his blockade against Colombian imports entering Venezuela. But Mr. Chavez has no reason to alter those trade restrictions, which he imposed as a response to the military agreement between Colombia and the United States.

So, those who believe that things can improve now that President Uribe is leaving power are wrong. And the reason is a very simple one. Their argument rests on the assumption that the problem in the bilateral relationship was somehow Mr. Uribe’s doing. Without him, President Santos can activate a restart button à la Obama and the tensions along the border will diminish. Needless to say, this is completely off base, because the problem in the relationship is not to be found on the Colombian side of the border, but in Caracas. Hugo Chavez is the problem. His expansionary plans for the Bolivarian revolution mean that, for as long as he remains president of Venezuela, there will be trouble between the two nations, for Colombia will always be an obstacle to his strategy.

For our own good, let us not delude ourselves. The respectful ("kind" is too strong a word) gestures that have been coming out of Caracas are nothing but a prelude for what we are already used to. The accusations and the threats will follow again soon - Mr. Chavez knows no other language. As I am sure that the president-elect is aware of this, I trust him to keep the country alert and ready for when the problems with our neighbor strike again.

Santos’ massive coalition

In just a week, Juan Manuel Santos has been able to build a political coalition of a size not seen since the time of the National Front (1958-1974). After Mr. Santos’ historic victory in the election, almost all of Colombia’s political class has flocked to the president-elect’s side. All of a sudden, everyone wants to be a part of Mr. Santos’ coalition, sparking fears that the new president may be able to rule “unopposed”, as Semana put it this week. Instead of a green wave, Colombia is in the midst of an orange tsunami. After their defeat, I heard many Antanas Mockus supporters say they would change their nationality and that Colombia is made of manure (they used another word), but in spite of their disagreement, it seems that the country has warmed to the idea of the Santos presidency.

Right now, with the memory of victory still fresh, everyone in the huge Santos coalition is smiling with complacency. The two main "Uribista" parties, Partido de la U and the Conservatives, received strong popular support in the congressional elections. After opposing President Alvaro Uribe’s re-election, a weakened Cambio Radical seems poised to return to the executive branch by receiving control over some ministry. Partido de Unidad Nacional (PIN), formed mostly by relatives and friends of para-politicians, will no doubt support Mr. Santos’ government, even if the president has ignored them thus far.

But the fact that the current Uribista parties will support President Santos surprises nobody. What was deliciously unexpected was that a sizeable part of Alvaro Uribe’s opposition in Congress also joined Mr. Santos’ national unity coalition. And in just seven days, the force of the president-elect’s victory has divided and weakened the already feeble opposition parties. Most Liberals in Congress have expressed their support for the Santos presidency. Only those on the left of the party, such as Piedad Cordoba, have refused to enter such a pact. It seems that after eight years of being in opposition, the Liberals realized that if they did not court Mr. Santos, they could become even more politically irrelevant.

And the surprises did not end there. In a very interesting move, the meaning of which I am still pondering, Gustavo Petro, the presidential candidate for the Polo Democratico Alternativo (PDA), decided to pay a visit to Mr. Santos. Mr. Petro wanted to talk to the president-elect about water regulations, land redistribution for internally displaced people, and reparations for the victims of the internal conflict. Straight away, the PDA directives reacted angrily, maintaining that Mr. Petro’s decision was a personal initiative unrelated to party policy. PDA director Clara Lopez gave several radio interviews saying that the party leaders had unanimously decided to oppose the Santos’ presidency in Congress.

The PDA’s ever-present lack of unity started to show even more after it became clear that the center-right would continue to rule Colombia. Some think that Mr. Petro is testing Mr. Santos’ claim that his government will be one of national unity in which everyone is welcome (although Mr. Petro has stated that he will not support the new administration). But there is another possible explanation. Mr. Petro is much smarter than most in his party, and he finds himself less to the left than many of them. Perhaps he feels that the current leaders of the PDA, who were appointed and not elected to their positions, are taking the party down the wrong road. The PDA’s weak performance in the Congressional elections, in which they obtained a mere 848,000 votes, seems to confirm that. In contrast, Mr. Petro obtained 1.4 million votes as a presidential candidate. Maybe he believes that the party will have a better future under his care, and he is trying to show some independence from its directives.

And what about the Greens? With only eight seats in Congress, the Green Party will have no major role whatsoever in the legislative life of Colombia until 2014. After losing the election, Mr. Mockus said that his party would decide to support or oppose government initiatives on a case-by-case basis. He also rejected the possibility of taking a position in Mr. Santos’ cabinet, before anybody offered him one. If the Green Party wants to remain alive in politics, their best alternative is to run for the mayoralty of Bogota, which they could probably win. Enrique Peñalosa, a one-time mayor who lost in the last election, could perform well in 2011. After the disaster of Samuel Moreno, Bogotans remember Mr. Peñalosa’s administration with fondness.

It looks like President Santos will have an easy time in Congress for the next four years. With control over 80% of Congress, and a divided opposition, the new president has a fantastic opportunity to make the changes that the country needs. Of course, the downside is that with such a firm grip on the legislature, the executive could exert almost unchecked power over the polity, deforming Colombia’s republican structure. But I trust Mr. Santos, and I am sure that after his presidency, the nation will be safer, fairer, and more prosperous than it is today. Indeed, for a country as divided as Colombia, this national unity pact is nothing less than a political blessing.

The real big question is whether the pact will hold, whether Mr. Santos’ big tent can fit so many people. Without a doubt, it can’t. The first signs appeared this week after the Conservatives blocked Simon Gaviria’s bid for the presidency of the House of Representatives. The Conservatives, the second largest party in the country, argued that the position ought to go to one of their own, and not to Mr. Gaviria, who hails from the Liberal Party.

Can Mr. Santos keep so many parties happy all of the time? If he gives too much attention to the small parties, he could anger the large ones, where his political base lies. Instead, if he is perceived as working only with La U and the Conservatives, the smaller parties could feel ignored and denounce "national unity" as a lie. The good news for Mr. Santos is that even if he only plays to the needs of the large parties, he can still have his way in Congress. This, of course, is also good news for the country, because God knows that, on top of all its problems, the last thing Colombia needs is a divided government.

IOU: The Uribe administration and future budget expenditures

With the presidential election at our doorstep, there has been much talk about the inheritance that the Uribe administration is leaving to the next president. If you read any Colombian newspaper now, you would think that the word ‘scandal’ summarizes this inheritance perfectly. The DAS wiretapping case is getting uglier, as more truths are revealed, and the possibility that the espionage was ordered from within the presidential palace materializes. Sabas Pretelt de la Vega, a former Minister of Interior, has been called to trial for bribing a congresswoman into voting in favor of President Uribe’s first reelection. The Supreme Court started a preliminary investigation into an alleged fraud in the congressional election last March.

Oh, it is going to be an interesting next few months. But there is something else that the new government will inherit from the Uribe administration. And so will the government after that one, and the next, and the one after that… The Uribe presidency wants to make sure that nobody in the next decade or two forgets who was living at Casa de Nariño at the beginning of the century. The inheritance I am talking about is the 26.4 trillion pesos (US$13.6 billion) that will have to be spent between 2011 and 2027 in different infrastructure projects. The Uribe administration signed a number of concessions for the following fifteen years, which means that the next four governments will be paying the bill.

Those who dislike President Uribe see this as a never-ending curse. They won’t even be able to get rid entirely of their nemesis for another decade and a half. They are infuriated that this government they despise has promised money to some big corporations when they won’t even be in power anymore. For others, this goes against the very concept of democracy, and they argue that the current government has no right to “tie the hands” of future administrations in budgetary matters. Paraphrasing a friend of mine, who is not too fond of Mr. Uribe, the appearance this all gives is that the next president will not be able to do much given these financial commitments.

Of course, all that is nonsense, and a gross exaggeration, to say the least. Defending the Uribe administration has fallen out of fashion, but I am going to do a little bit of that in the following lines. You have to be very gullible to believe that a mere 26.4 trillion pesos in the next fifteen years will leave future governments with no room for maneuver. All that money, spent until 2027, gives an average of 1.76 trillion per year, which is about 1.1 percent of the 2010 budget of the central government. Knowing that, I am pretty confident that whoever wins the presidency has little to fear from these financial commitments.

Those who disagree will point out that 5 billion are due next year already. In 2011, the new government will have to spend about a fifth of its investment budget (which amounts to 25 trillion pesos, more or less) in commitments taken by the Uribe administration. Let me point out that the new government will still have plenty of command over the other four fifths of the investment budget. Moreover, there is something that the Uribe critics do not want to bring up. The infrastructure projects that the Uribe administration authorized are very important for the Colombia’s development. The bulk of those 26.4 trillion will not be spent on petty things, but on 6,600 kilometers of highways and roads, a metro system for Bogota, and public transportation projects for smaller cities like Sincelejo, Montería and Valledupar.

In Colombia, infrastructure projects like those take decades to be planned and executed, if they are ever carried out. Bogotans have been promised a metro system for more than thirty years now. By committing to these future expenditures, the Uribe administration is giving a green light to these projects, providing them with the financial foundation that they need. If the government had been unable to commit those resources, by 2027 Colombia would remain as infrastructure-starved as it is today.

But the critics will also point out that what the Uribe administration has only been seeking political goodwill by spending money that will never be theirs. That is fiscally irresponsible and morally reprehensible, from their point of view. Just let me say two things about that. Years from now, when all those highways and the metro system are finished, it will be the incumbent administration of the time who will take all the credit. Nobody is going to remember that it was the Uribe presidency that started those projects. And if somebody remembers, the incumbent politicians are going to make sure that they forget about it totally with those heartfelt speeches they will give during the inauguration ceremonies. The politicians of the future will get the credit for the political will that the Uribe administration has shown by signing on to these projects.

Now, let me say something about the supposed fiscal irresponsibility in all this. The part of the story that the critics are not telling is that economic activity (and hence, government revenue) would increase as a consequence of these projects. More and better roads, and cities with well-developed transportation systems will help Colombians buy and sell, produce and deliver goods faster. Those projects will grease the rusty cogs of the country’s economy. Am I the only one who has the crazy idea that tax revenue could actually go up as a result of better infrastructure? Plus, all those construction projects will create jobs –and I bet that future governments will not be complaining about those workers not being part of the unemployment statistics.

Decades from now, when Bogota has a metro system, and when those narrow roads that link Colombia’s cities are a thing of the past, few will recall that it was the Uribe administration who first decided to commit to their construction. By then, others will have taken the credit. For now, the Uribe government only gets the attacks.

Mockus (still) does not have a real plan for his government

The first round of the Colombian presidential election is very near, and the green wave of Antanas Mockus has taken the country by surprise. Mr. Mockus’ surge in the opinion polls, from 3% in February to 38% in late April, was in nobody’s calculations. My column of March 29, when I wrote that “Juan Manuel Santos seems poised to become Colombia’s next president” is now as dated as those hideous LCD watch/calculators of the 80s.

Even I have been seduced by the green wave. It is everywhere. All my friends on Facebook and my followers on Twitter seem to be part of it. All of a sudden, Mr. Mockus has become this man who will fix Colombia’s broken politics, who will end corruption, who will bring a “culture of legality” (as he likes to say) to a nation where crime and murder are the daily bread of the masses. I can’t help thinking that with his shaman-like sunflower necklace Mr. Mockus looks like a messenger of peace who has come to heal a wounded nation.

“Yes!” I thought to myself “Maybe voting for Mr. Mockus is the right thing to do”. After all, the man is very likeable, and most people remember him as a good mayor of Bogota. Also, his days of eccentricity, when he mooned students and threw glasses of water on fellow politicians, are long gone. Perhaps what the country needs is a political outsider, someone who is not embroiled in the old way of politics, who is not part of the good ol’ boys club. In addition Mr. Mockus’ mantra that “life is sacred”, repeated by his thousands of followers, has fallen upon Colombians as an epiphany. In a nation where too many people die senselessly every year, where murders and massacres have been so common that they do not make it to the headlines anymore, Mr. Mockus’ mantra is the equivalent of a painful wake-up call. For one moment, I believed that Antanas Mockus should become Colombia’s next president. For one second, I realized that his message of legality and decency was what the country needed to finally exit decades of poverty and bloodshed. For one moment, I embraced the green wave and became part of it.

Just for one moment. Before all that green frenzy was able to take full possession of my being, the public policy student in me fought back. What are Mr. Mockus’ campaign proposals? Does he have a plan for when he is in government? Is there any substance behind his rhetoric of “democratic legality” and “social transformation”? I went to his campaign website, and clicked on the “Government Proposal” tab, thinking I would surely find Mr. Mockus’ messianic plan there. I was wrong. I found nothing but empty words, catchy slogans, good intentions, and vague phrases. “We look for a society based on trust among people and in government institutions, on equality, equity, and the full exercise of rights” is a prime example. Another perfect one is: “To incorporate in [our] culture the enjoyment of a job well done and of productivity”. One of my personal favorites reads: “To promote the construction and the fulfillment of agreements about the main regional and national problems”

Of course that we are all for equality and trust! I also love it when I am productive and I do a good job. Needless to say, I would like all national and regional problems to be solved through agreement. But those are not campaign proposals! Those are not a list of public policies that a Mockus administration would implement! Apparently, the green wave was nothing but a sea of void campaign promises and mission statements worthy of a beauty pageant. I was disappointed.

Given that the campaign website had nothing close to a government plan, I went on Facebook and Twitter to address the Mockus supporters. Perhaps they knew what their candidate was proposing. I was wrong again. None of my Twitter followers was able to outline three concrete proposals by Mr. Mockus. I even published on my Facebook profile that I would give US$100 to anyone who could find five such proposals online. I did not lose my money, but I managed to upset a good friend of mine as well as my brother-in-law, two ardent Mockus believers.

The days went by and I just kept thinking that it was unbelievable that no one had noticed Mr. Mockus’ lack of substance. His website was there for all to see, but nobody seemed to be paying attention. And then, finally, La Silla Vacía published an article on the issue. The article compared Mr. Mockus’ anemic proposals with Germán Vargas Lleras’ 21 documents on different subjects (the economy, housing, poverty alleviation, sports, etc.), Gustavo Petro’s 30-page long government plan, and Juan Manuel Santos’ 109 “initiatives” for his presidency. Mr. Mockus’ campaign staff said that they were preparing a document with some concrete proposals, drafted by a number of experts.

Last Friday, the document was finally uploaded to the campaign website. It is 28 pages long, and it is divided in fifteen different sections that deal with a wide variety of topics (the environment, rural development, international relations, etc). Although it definitely has somewhat more concrete campaign proposals than before, the document is still full of worthless verbosity and vagueness. Two examples are “[w]e will defend the separation of powers” and “[w]e will develop programs to formalize the right to own land.” Any idea of how much these programs will cost? Is there even an outline of how those programs are supposed to work? I was surprised to find no information about that in the document. When I worked for the Vargas Lleras campaign we not only estimated the full cost of the proposals we drafted, but we also specified the source of those funds (new taxes, oil royalties, diminished spending in other areas). I am sure that if I were to present Mr. Mockus’ document in one of my public policy classes at Princeton, it wouldn’t get a grade higher than a C.

All this makes me very uneasy. The man who could conceivably become president in August has no real plan for his government. Is he going to improvise once he is in power? Mr. Mockus is a smart man. For the sake of Colombia, I hope he puts all his intelligence to work and drafts a much better document –because this one does not do.

A Sisyphean task: A look at Colombia’s 2009 coca production data

ast week, the Colombian government released information showing that in 2009 Colombia had around 68,000 hectares of coca production. That is the lowest level since 1996, and it represents a 16% decrease from 2008 levels. Of course, such news was received with great pleasure by many politicians and public officials in Bogota. Colombia’s war on drugs is producing good results, and the downward trend of coca production that started at the beginning of this century has continued. Perhaps, some could say, after all these years, the day will come when Colombia eradicates illegal drug production.

And the truth is that Colombia may well be the only country in the world that has made substantial progress in the war on drugs in the past decade. Despite all their flaws, Plan Colombia and other US aid to the country have helped bring Colombia back from the semi-anarchy of the late '90s. Since Plan Colombia was first implemented, there has been a 58% reduction in coca production. By 2008, cocaine production had decreased 38% from its peak in the year 2000, and the latest data suggests it may have declined even further in 2009. This is proof that President Uribe’s hardline "democratic security" policy has brought unprecedented control by the state of remote areas of the country. The FARC and other drug-funded groups have lost big money as the programs of aerial and manual fumigation of coca plants have prevented the production of hundreds of tons of cocaine.

But although I welcome these 2009 coca production numbers, I do not want to get my hopes up or celebrate for too long. The 68,000 hectares of coca are more than enough to leave drug traffickers awash with cash to keep causing trouble, as those of us who lived in Colombia in 1996 know full well. Although the Colombian government has done a superb job against drug production, I cannot help but wonder when all this will stop. The government spends a fantastic amount of money fighting drug cartels, eradicating coca plants and destroying cocaine production labs hidden in the immense Colombian jungles. More taxpayers’ money is spent every year patrolling the country's skies, the seas and rivers, looking for packages of cocaine hidden in some truck, camouflaged in a cargo of flowers, or escaping quietly in a mini-submarine owned by a drug lord.

In order to start having some success in Colombia’s war on drugs, the government had little choice but to expand the defense budget to unprecedented levels, something I discussed in a previous column. And there are no signs that this will end anytime soon. Every year since 2000 the Colombian government has increased the number of coca hectares it eradicates. In 2000, the government eradicated 61,000 hectares of coca; in 2008 that number was about 229,000. That is a good thing, some might say, as it shows that the government is making greater efforts against drugs. But the reality is somewhat more complex. What lies behind these numbers is that in its fight against drugs the Colombian government has found a problem of diminishing returns. For example, in 2003, in order to achieve a reduction in coca production of 16,000 hectares, the government had to eradicate 137,000 hectares of coca; in 2008, the government’s record-breaking eradication left the country with a mere 13,000 fewer hectares of coca than in 2007. That is about 100,000 more eradicated hectares for a decline in production that is 3,000 hectares smaller.

Why could this be? If the government has become better at controlling the national territory, if the FARC has been severely weakened in the recent years, if about 700 drug lords have been extradited to the United States under the Uribe administration, if more money has been devoted to the military than ever before, why is the war against drugs becoming more difficult? Well, there are several plausible explanations. The most obvious one is that drug producers have been learning how to avoid the effects of fumigation. Some coca growers quickly rinse their plants with water after the airplanes hired by the government have sprayed the herbicides on their fields. This can prevent the herbicide (known as glyphosate) from damaging the plants. Coca farmers have also learned to camouflage their crop (planting it in the middle of other crops, or putting plants further away from each other), making identification more difficult from the air, or by satellite.

A third reason for the decreased efficiency of the government's efforts is that drug eradication leads traffickers to move their fields elsewhere, and to overproduce. This phenomenon repeats itself year after year. In 2008, the UN found that there had been strong decreases in coca cultivation in the departments of Arauca, Vichada, Meta, Putumayo and Antioquia, coupled with strong increases in Nariño, Cauca, Santander and Cordoba. Furthermore, as drug traffickers know that at least some of their crops may be destroyed by the government, they cultivate extra plants in order to compensate for their lost production. Paradoxically, then, eradication creates incentives to produce more coca, not less, thus establishing the need for even more aggressive eradication efforts by the government.

So, I look at the coca production numbers released this week and sigh. I ask myself how much more money the Colombian taxpayer will spend in the war against cocaine. I am almost certain that the impressive results of 2009 were the product of another record-breaking year of coca eradication. And if the government wants to continue with that trend, it seems that in 2010 there will be the need for even more fumigation. But even this offers no guarantee of diminishing production. Nobody should forget that coca production rebounded in 2005 and again in 2007 in spite of increased eradication efforts in both years. So let us rejoice, but keep it real at the same time. Drug trafficking is a monster with many heads. And frankly the Colombian government does not have enough hands to deal with all of them at once.

The enemy within: An ugly dossier of espionage is revealed

While I was an exchange student at L’Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, otherwise known as Sciences Po, I took a class called "Intelligence Agencies in Democratic Societies." My professor was an interesting fellow, very knowledgeable about the inner workings of the American CIA, the British MI6, and the French Renseignements Generaux (RG), among other agencies. To be honest, I did not pay much attention in class throughout the semester, partly because I ended up in that course by some mistake of Science Po’s scheduling software. However, an event in Colombia last week reminded me of some of the things I learned in that class and I would like to start take this column from there.

On one of our first sessions in that class, I had to give an oral presentation about the following question: Is espionage a trans-historical phenomenon? (L’espionnage est-il un phenomene transhistorique ?). In other words, is espionage (euphemistically called "intelligence" in modern times) an element inherent to human civilization? Soon after I started my research, some ancient voices spoke to me with a very clear answer.

Sun Tzu, a Chinese military strategist who lived around the year 500 BC and author of the classic "The Art of War," wrote the following words: “Whether the object be to crush an army, to storm a city, or to assassinate an individual, it is always necessary to begin by finding out the names of the attendants, the aides-de-camp, and door-keepers and sentries of the general in command. Our spies must be commissioned to ascertain these.” Sun Tzu kept talking to me with that soft and reptile-like voice of his: “Hence it is that which none in the whole army are more intimate relations to be maintained than with spies. None should be more liberally rewarded. In no other business should greater secrecy be preserved.”

Besides Sun Tzu, I found other men of ancient times who also used spies to weaken their enemies. The Book of Deuteronomy (1:22) tells of how Moses decided to use espionage against the people of Canaan: "Let us send men ahead to spy out the land for us and bring back a report…” On his side, Kautilya (born circa 350 BC), a strategist and an advisor to an Indian emperor, wrote in his treatise on statecraft, "The Arthashastra," that a piece of information brought by spy could not be trusted until there was confirmation from two other independent sources. The Pharaoh Ramses II is also said to have defeated the Hittites thanks to his network of counterespionage, which realized that two seemingly repentant Hittite soldiers were actually giving false information to the Egyptians on purpose.

So yes, espionage is as old as human civilization. It is a weapon of war - and perhaps the only one that can be used during peacetime. It involves secrecy and deceit. By definition, there can be no such thing as "clean" or "decent" espionage. It is a dirty game of lies, fabrications and backstabbing. And that is precisely the reason why "intelligence" and "legal" usually do not mix well together in modern Western societies. How can you wiretap someone’s telephone in order to prevent them from committing a crime, without violating their right to privacy and the presumption of innocence? How strong should the indication that someone is a threat to others be in order for the state to be allowed to trigger its espionage machinery against him? If getting a warrant from a judge is a requirement for conducting "legal" spying on somebody, could that judicial procedure alert that person who, in turn, could act to hide all his wrongdoings? There are no easy answers to these questions.

All this rambling about espionage is part of this column for a reason. Last week, the Office of Colombia’s Prosecutor General made public a series of documents that had been taken from the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS), one of the country’s intelligence agencies. The information that those documents contain is truly hair-raising. For a long time, Colombia has known that DAS had wiretapped the telephones of some magistrates of the Supreme Court, of politicians in opposition, of certain journalists who were critical of the government, and even of certain officials who work directly for the President. However, what the Office of the Prosecutor General published this week is even worse. According to a witness in the investigation, DAS eavesdropped on some of the private meetings of the Supreme Court, when the magistrates were discussing topics like the President’s possible re-election or the extradition of drug offenders to the US. According to the witness, DAS had been doing that in order to give that information to government officials, something that still has to be proven.

And if listening secretly to the discussions of the Supreme Court does not look bad enough to you, read this. Some of the documents show that DAS orchestrated a wide-ranging campaign to discredit opposition politicians and create them legal trouble. The documents have titles like “Political War” and they outline the objectives of several DAS operations. Those documents clearly say things like: “Piedad Cordoba [a senator from the Liberal Party]: Create links with the AUC … Horacio Serpa Uribe [current governor of the Santander department]: Create links with ELN … Gustavo Petro [current presidential candidate for the Polo Democratico]: Generate links with FARC.” Other DAS documents explicitly pinpoint some NGOs (for instance, Redepaz), international organizations (such as the European Human Rights Commission and the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights), and a law firm (CCAJAR) as targets of “sabotage” and “discrediting.” The document that describes the actions that will be taken against CCAJAR reads: “Create links between CCAJAR and ELN … ACTION: Exchanging a message with an ELN commander, which will be found during a raid." In other words, DAS planned to forge evidence to put the CCAJAR lawyers in jail.

If these documents are real, and there is reason to believe that they are, somebody has some serious explaining to do. DAS seems to have forgotten that we do not live in Sun Tzu or Kautilya’s times of sovereigns with unlimited power and no accountability. If Colombia wants to deserve the names of "democracy" and "free nation" (and not a "partly free" one, as the Freedom House has it), then all this illegal espionage must cease immediately. Perhaps nobody at DAS has been informed that Colombia is a republic of citizens, and not a tyranny of subjects. And citizens have rights. This situation is simply unacceptable, and I would like to see some heads roll. I am not keeping my hopes up, though.

If you have read my previous columns, you certainly know that I am one of those Colombians who are deeply thankful to President Uribe for all the good changes he has brought to Colombia. To be sure, I am the most uribista of all the columnists in Colombia Reports, and I have written in favor of the government’s actions many times. But not this time. The Supreme Court, opposition politicians, NGOs, international organizations - all these must be off-limits for the state’s intelligence apparatus. Unless there is clear and overwhelming indication that someone is associated with terrorists (and simply agreeing with them does not qualify as such), he cannot be spied on. And do not even get me started on the forgery of evidence. That is immoral, illegal, and disgusting.

As Juan Gossain, one of Colombia’s most influential journalists said recently in an excellent radio editorial, it is time we understand that the government and the state are not the same thing. The political enemies of the ruling administration are not the enemies of the state. On the contrary, they have the right and the duty to dissent and to argue against the government. To have an active opposition is the only road to democracy. The government has to win against them in the battlefield of ideas and policymaking, not through wiretapping and fabrications. The enemy within, it seems to me, is not the opposition or the Supreme Court, but a bunch of power hungry DAS agents and their self-righteous masters.

I hope that those who ordered these illegalities face justice and pay for their actions. Many questions are still unanswered, and given the incredibly slow pace of the Colombian judiciary, as well as the interests involved in this case, chances are that nothing will happen. I hope I am wrong. But if I learned something from that class in Paris is that states have used and abused their intelligence machineries since times immemorial. The challenge of democracy is to restrain these organizations that work mostly in secret, accountable to very few people. It remains to be seen whether Colombia’s fragile democracy is up to the task.

On human wrongs: Yair Klein and the European Court of Human Rights

Yair Klein is a sinister man. A professional killer, expert in the use of brute force, he is the personification of an angry, dangerous bulldog. Born in 1948, Klein joined the Israeli Defense Forces, where he reached the rank of lieutenant colonel, and fought to defend his homeland in the Six Day War. In 1972, Klein was part of a team that rescued a number of hostages held in a Libyan plane in Tel Aviv’s airport. That action was carried out with such military precision that it took the Israelis just seven seconds to neutralize the hijackers. One year later he fought for Israel again in the Yom Kippur War. After leaving the IDF in 1983, Klein founded his own company of mercenaries, and ever since he has used his contacts in Israel and in the wider world to make juicy profits out of war in faraway nations.

Klein’s business interests led him to Colombia in the mid 1980s, when the country’s bloody war between the state and drug traffickers was starting to escalate. At that time he made contacts with people like Pablo Escobar and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, the leaders of the Medellin Cartel. Klein provided them with weapons. A couple of weeks ago I was reading a book called "Cocaine Politics" by Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, and I found Klein’s name mentioned on pages 76 and 77: “Klein became the center of another scandal involving a large shipment of Israeli arms to the Medellin cartel […] The weapons traveled via the Caribbean island of Antigua.” In 1989, when Escobar’s thugs blew up an Avianca airliner in midflight killing over 110 people, the Colombian authorities also saw Klein’s hand behind the terrorist attack. According to "Cocaine Politics," at the time, "Colombia’s top drug investigator, Gen. Miguel Maza Marquez, blamed Yair Klein […] : "He is the person who trained these people (the Medellin cartel) in the making of bombings and is responsible for this aggression."

Besides acting as weapons supplier and bomb maker-in-chief, Klein also trained dozens of the cartels’ paid assassins. He taught them how to shoot with accuracy, how to attack a moving vehicle, how to kill their target in seconds. Klein was instrumental in the creation of the first paramilitary groups that would later merge into the massive Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), the far-right terrorist group that had the FARC as its sworn enemy, and that wanted to "refound the homeland" by putting political allies in strategic positions in government. Fidel Castaño, a top paramilitary leader, was one of Klein’s apprentices.

In 1991, an Israeli court sentenced Klein for exporting weapons to Colombia illegally, and he had to pay a fine of about $13,000. Later in the '90s Klein left for Africa, where he profited from the blood diamond industry in war-torn Liberia and Sierra Leone. In one of his most famous transactions, Klein tried to exchange a military helicopter for access to a diamond mine in Sierra Leone. He ended up spending sixteen months in a Freetown jail, after he was found guilty of aiding the Revolutionary United Front, an actor in the Sierra Leone civil war that was notorious for mutilating the genitals of its victims, especially children.

In 2002, a court in the Colombian city of Manizales sentenced Klein for his training of paramilitary groups. Klein was tried in absentia (he was a fugitive at the time) in order to prevent the legal deadline from expiring, as the crimes had taken place almost twenty years before, the maximum time given by law to bring the case to trial. Klein’s debt to Colombian justice amounts to a little less than eleven years in jail and a fine of $5,500. In 2007, Caracol, a Colombian television network, broadcast an interview with Klein, in which he said that he did not regret his actions in the country. In fact, Klein said his best years were those he spent in Colombia, helping in the fight against the guerrillas. He even added that demobilizing the paramilitary groups was a mistake and that if the Colombian government allowed him to return to the country, he would get rid of the FARC in six months. Throughout the interview, Klein maintained that he first went to Colombia at the request of the national police. After that, the Colombian government used INTERPOL to have Klein captured, and Russian authorities caught him in April of 2007.

The fight that followed was over Klein’s extradition to Colombia. Klein’s lawyers took the case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), of which Russia is a member. The ECHR, based in Strasbourg, is Europe’s highest court on human rights issues, and its decisions are binding on all of its member states. As you may know, at the beginning of this month, the ECHR decided that Russia could not extradite Klein. The court’s judgment was that Klein would face "a danger of ill-treatment" if he were extradited to Colombia, given that "the evidence […] demonstrates that problems still persist in Colombia in connection with the ill-treatment of detainees." Furthermore, the ECHR took a comment by a former vice president of Colombia that Klein should "rot in jail" as an "indication that the person in question runs a serious risk of being subjected to ill-treatment while in detention." The court went as far as to insinuate that "the practice of torture" is some sort of standard procedure in Colombia’s fight against terrorism. It seems that the Russian authorities will attempt to appeal the decision.

With this ruling, the ECHR has done a disservice to its own name and to the noble cause it claims to defend. Klein is a criminal, and he deserves to pay for the crimes he committed in Colombia and against Colombians. No other country in the world will try him for those heinous acts, and now that a Colombian court is finally trying to administer justice, the ECHR blocks it all. The judges in that European court are either incredibly ignorant or stupidly naïve. They have brought shame upon themselves. But nothing is worse than their arrogance, their act of pure jurisprudential snobbery, claiming that Colombia’s judicial system is unreliable, biased and corrupt. What a typical show of Eurocentrist superiority. Lest we forget, at the time when half of today’s ECHR member states were either ruled by communist or pseudo-fascist dictatorships, Colombia was a liberal, democratic nation, where the rule of law was certainly much stronger than in places like Bulgaria, Hungary, Armenia, Spain and Portugal.

God knows that Colombia’s courts are far from perfect, but after reading the ECHR’s opinion on Klein’s extradition, my conclusion is that European justice is no better. Colombia, the territory in which some of Klein’s terrible crimes were committed, has the right to try him. But the ECHR ended up protecting a murderer, a horrendous mercenary who has spread terror and death in some of the planet’s most vulnerable countries. A sad day for Europe. A sad day for Colombia. A sad day for justice.

Juan Manuel Santos, the President in waiting

Juan Manuel Santos seems poised to become Colombia’s next president. A number of opinion polls last week confirmed that he is the most popular candidate out there, and given President Uribe’s absence from the presidential race, Mr. Santos has received the people’s favor. Despite his lack of electoral experience (he has never been elected by the people for any position in government), Mr. Santos’ lead in the race looks very solid, and if there are no surprises along the way, he will have few things to worry about. Right now, Juan Manuel Santos is President in waiting.

There are a number of elements that will account for Mr. Santos’ easy victory, which I will discuss in the following paragraphs. One wonders how a candidate whose bid for the presidency started only a month ago, who spent a good portion of last year outside of Colombia, and who has no previous experience with political campaigns, has the lead in the most important election in the country. The answer lies in three important factors.

First, there is no other candidate who can honestly compete against Mr. Santos’ for the title of keeper of President Uribe’s legacy. There are no Andres Felipe Ariases in this race, and with Uribito (little Uribe, the nickname for the former Minister of Agriculture) out of the race, it is safe to assume that Mr. Santos has the blessing of President Uribe. Even if there are other candidates who sincerely want to preserve the work and the philosophy of the Alvaro Uribe government (namely Noemi Sanin and German Vargas Lleras), Mr. Santos remains the only true uribista on the ballot in the eyes of the electorate. That already gives him a huge advantage over the other candidates, whose burden is now to prove to the voters that they have enough uribista credentials, while those of Mr. Santos have never been put in doubt.

The second factor that explains Mr. Santos’ lead is a combination of two events that occurred within two weeks of each other: the Constitutional Court’s denial against the referendum for Mr. Uribe’s reelection, and the sweeping victory that the pro-government Partido de la U had in the Congressional election. The first of those events left hordes of uribistas disappointed and bitter. Many people had already taken a third Uribe candidacy for granted, and after the Court blocked the referendum, they started to look desperately for a new candidate to support. They were like victims of a shipwreck anxiously swimming to the nearest island, where Mr. Santos was patiently waiting, ready to allay their fears. Partido de la U getting 28 seats in the Senate on March 14 was the last confirmation that many uribista voters needed in order to support Mr. Santos, the party leader. To put it bluntly, the political defeat of Alvaro Uribe, forever banished from presidential politics by the Constitutional Court, represented a sweet moment for Mr. Santos, who saw the crown of uribismo fall automatically on his head.

The third factor behind Mr. Santos’ great electoral performance so far is his own reputation as a tough, experienced decision-maker. As he likes to repeat (and, as they say, it is not bragging if it is true), the Armed Forces had their greatest victories against FARC under his tenure. Few Colombians forget the overwhelming feeling of power and hope that came after operations Fenix and Jaque, which resulted in the death of Raul Reyes and the liberation of a dozen high profile FARC-held hostages. For a nation that had been in retreat for too long, hiding in fear of terrorism and death, and with so much pessimism having taken hold of the population for many years, Juan Manuel Santos represents a period of assertiveness and victory against terrorism. After President Uribe, Mr. Santos is perhaps the person most closely identified with the government’s policy of Democratic Security. And that gives him enough political capital to be the frontrunner in the presidential campaign.

So how confident should Mr. Santos be? The last opinion poll gives him a solid 36% of votes, followed by Noemi Sanin, who has a relatively weak 17%. Antanas Mockus and German Vargas are next in line with 9% and 8%, respectively. As of now, Mr. Santos’ passage to the runoff election is absolutely certain, a vote that he apparently would also be able to win (against Ms. Sanin, Mr. Santos would get 44% of the votes, while she would have 30%; a similar thing would occur in a Santos vs. Mockus, or Santos vs. Vargas scenarios). With about a 20% advantage against his nearest competitor, I bet Mr. Santos has been sleeping like a baby, free from campaign stress, and that he already sees himself as the 40th President of Colombia.

But politics is the realm of the unexpected, and it is a well-known fact that Murphy’s Law applies with greater rigor to politicians than to the rest of the human species. Mr. Santos cannot rest on his laurels, and although two months (what separates us from the election) seems like a very short time for drastic changes in electoral opinion, he had better keep his guard up. This election has already seen some big surprises (think of Sergio Fajardo’s descent into irrelevance and of Antanas Mockus’ newfound political stardom), and when you are in first place, the only other way you can go is down. Of course, I am not predicting Mr. Santos’ defeat, as all the odds point to the other direction. I am simply reminding Mr. Santos that he should watch his back, as the candidates running behind him will not let him take the presidency without a good fight.