Address by the President of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, on assuming the Presidency Pro Tempore of the Andean Community (CAN) at the Seventeenth Meeting of the Andean Council of Presidents

Tarija, Bolivia, June 14, 2007

Many thanks to you all and many thanks to President Evo Morales for his hospitality.  Also my congratulations, because it has not been easy for him, given the political situation in the hemisphere, to guide the Andean Community to this safe port, which is the launching of negotiations with the European Union.  I believe he has cleared the way very well and, God willing, we will try to move ahead.  Thank-you very much, President Evo Morales, for your effort to reach consensuses in the presence of contradictions, which is very important.  And many thanks to Tarija and its authorities for this hospitality.

How good it is to see Chile return to the Andean Community.  We thank her Government and President Bachelet for this great effort that gives us new strength.

Allow me, please, to start off by talking about Colombia.  We have two realities: a democracy that is progressing and terrorism that is declining.  A country with the full range of political options, with all of the political contradictions, suffering violence from which we are just now beginning to recover.  It is important for us to communicate to our Andean brothers our huge effort to control terrorism and our domestic commitment to enhance democracy.   

We have been working toward three Government objectives: to consolidate security with democracy, to consolidate investor confidence with social responsibility and to build social cohesion and equity and overcome poverty.  These matters go hand-in-hand although, at first, they appeared to be mutually exclusive.   

By way of example, for a long time in Colombia it was thought that security and social policy are mutually exclusive.  And before the intellectuals, the writers, began to accept this convergence, it was the people at large who acquainted us with it.    

Today, in all regions of Colombia, in a dialogue that our community-oriented Government has tried to sustain with the Colombian people uninterruptedly, the citizens are clamoring equally for security and for social equality.  They understand that one is not possible without the other.     

Security creates investor confidence, confidence in the country, confidence in living in Colombia, confidence in studying in Colombia.  It gives youth back their hope of finding happiness in their country once again, of realizing their spiritual, intellectual and material aspirations.  That security, democratically oriented, creates investor confidence which, with social responsibility, must provide the means for overcoming poverty, for building equity.  I would say that investor confidence provides the resources for making our security policy sustainable and, at the same time, that our social policy legitimizes our security policy.    

We are working more to build investor confidence than to seek immediate high growth rates because we believe that it is investor confidence alone that guarantees sustained high growth rates over the long term.  Here, I mean, of course, national and international confidence, the confidence of microbusiness, medium-sized business and large business --all of it with social responsibility.   

The subject of social responsibility is very important to us.  We demand its presence in three areas:  First, in the State – investment relationship; second, in the relationship between communities and investment; and third, in the worker - investor relationship.

The transversal element must be honesty.  In the relationship between investment and the State: honesty, total transparency, in awarding franchises or concessions, in awarding contracts.  Our norm is to do this publicly.  For example, I found 21 disputes with international investors in the telecommunications area when I took office.  No one dared to settle them -- State officials, for fear of public opinion, of the oversight institutions.   

How did we overcome this situation?  With the participation of the citizens.  We demanded that before settlement agreements could be perfected for those disputes, full details needed to be published to acquaint the citizens with the cases.  And that dispelled suspicion, replacing it with trust, and the way was opened for their settlement.   

The National Government today does not permit a single contact, a single concession, to be awarded, except through a public process with full community participation.   

It is our idea that the age we live in calls for a combination of direct and representative democracy.  These are symbiotic.  We consider that the more direct citizen participation there is, the better the decisions made by the State, the more efficient and transparent their implementation, and, of course, the stronger the possibility of allocating political responsibilities and also of improving the distribution of benefits.   

For us, transparency is the first expression of social responsibility in the relations between investors and the State.  And citizen participation is the best guarantee of the existence of that transparency.   

The second element of that responsibility is the relationship between enterprises and communities, one that is grounded in solidarity.  We do not negotiate this solidarity within the confines of four walls.  We demand it in an ongoing public dialogue in which the participants are the investors, the Colombian State and the community.    

Our most recent case: international enterprises operating coal mines in the northern part of the country.  The communities complained that today 600 large coal-carrying trucks drive along unpaved roads unused for years, raising dust storms that affect the health of our fellow citizens. First, we have demanded publicly that these enterprises talk directly with the community.  Second are the agreements the Government marks out, those it helps build.  And third, is the fulfillment of those agreements.    

And finally, there is the social responsibility we demand in all labor relations.  We have stated that there can be no labor relations governed by unbridled capitalism.  Our legislation is balanced between protection of the workers and the necessary elements to create investor confidence.

We have also stated that we cannot permit labor relations to be marked by class divisions.  We seek labor relations founded on Christian principles, on democratic solidarity.   

Social responsibility is very important to us, in a country that offers investment every guarantee.   

In the case of social targets, the truth is that 40 years of deeply-rooted violence have damaged the country’s entire social fabric.  When I entered office, I found unemployment above 20 percent --in fact, in the neighborhood of 25 percent-- and 60 percent of the country’s inhabitants living in poverty.  Today, unemployment stands at 11 percent and we hope to rapidly bring it down to below 10.   

We attribute the greatest importance to social security affiliation.  The poverty which previously had reached 60 percent, last year measured 45.  We are making every effort to leave this figure at no more than 35 percent when our term of office ends in 2010.   

It has been a difficult struggle, because we found the country’s debt level at 50 percent of GDP.  Today, it stands at 30 or 32 percent.   We found a central National Government deficit of 7.5 percent.  This year, it should still be between 3.5 and 4 percent. In other words, we have had fairly severe financial and fiscal constraints.   

Our social plan is very ambitious.  We aspire to reach the Millennium Social Targets before the deadline set by the United Nations.  And we go beyond them in our social proposal.   

By way of example, our investment in education is already reaching 5 percent of GDP.  When my administration took office, the basic educational coverage was 84 percent --today, it stands at 92, and we plan to leave it at 100 percent.   

We have already started the schooling of poor children under the age of five --their initial education.  We plan to leave an enrollment of 400 thousand in initial education, duly linked to the educational system.   

Today we have a very important State vocational training institute funded by payroll contributions.  We do not subscribe to the recipe of separating taxes from the payroll, because in Colombia’s case these have been very important in returning benefits to the workers themselves through three institutions:  vocational training, workmen’s compensation funds administered by employers and workers, and the Family Welfare Institute, which is basically oriented toward children’s benefits.   

Classroom teaching hours in this vocational training institute have increased from five million four years ago to 15 million last year.  Enrollment has risen from one million 100 thousand students per year to 4 million last year.  Now our targets are very demanding, like having one million 200 thousand students trained through virtual means completely free of charge.   

Our university coverage is progressing in the cases of both university financing and student financing.  When I took office, university coverage was 22 percent; now it is 29.  We aspire to leave it at 34.  Student financing should be increased sixfold between 2002 and 2010.  And the number of students receiving subsidized government grants should also increase sixfold.    

We expect by August to have one million and a half “Families in Action,” displaced families at the extreme poverty level, receiving a government subsidy to guarantee their children’s feeding and education.  For example, we aspire to have all of the families living on the Ecuadorean border and along our Pacific coast, where poverty is rampant, receive this benefit by August, with full coverage.   

We aspire to reach full health coverage in 2010. During our first administration, we created 13 million new places in the health system by adding together those who are served through employee and worker contributions and those are served directly through State subsidies.   

Access to credit has been one of the factors of exclusion in Latin America.  A case in point in Bolivia sheds light on this.  We have created a system we call Opportunity Banking, whereby we commit public banking, private banking, NGO, wholesale banking, retail banking, and national budget resources, with the State as the permanent promoter, to make loans to the country’s poorest population groups.   

When our government took office, the loan portfolio for the poor amounted to 1.5 percent of total loans.  Early this year, that figure had risen to 5.5 percent and we hope to leave it at 7 to 8 percent of the total loan portfolio by the end of our term of office.    

During our first administration, we gave loans to one million 800 thousand poor families and in this second one, our target is to reach 5 million poor families with loans.   

As you can see, our social program is very ambitious.  And why have we tied it in with our building of investor confidence?  We believe that Latin America’s history teaches us some lessons.  I recall the discussion over development in the sixties.  The thesis was: push economic growth and social improvement will arrive automatically.  But that did not hold true.    

There was a country in the region that experienced steady growth rates of 6 to 7 percent, but at the same time a 14 percent growth in poverty.  Nor do we believe the opposite, of putting all of the emphasis on distribution, while neglecting investment conditions, because in that case all one ends up doing is distributing poverty.   

When we seek this balance between social targets and investor confidence, it is to find a way to overcome poverty and to reach equity, but with prosperity, not by distributing poverty.   

We are gaining ground in the area of security, but we haven’t won the battle yet.  We still have a long way to go.  We can see that many indicators have declined heavily.  In homicides, last year we had 17 thousand, down from 35 thousand. And as for kidnappings, from a figure of over 3 thousand, last year we had only 370.  And figures for massacres have also declined.    

We can see that the drug economy has fallen back.  When I travel the country, I see that 5 thousand new hotel rooms are being built and ask myself: is drug trafficking still making investments?  In the past, it was, very clearly.  Today, there are still some investments by drug trafficking, but these are small and efforts are being made to conceal them.   

I can see investor confidence in all of the country’s production activities.  And fortunately we do not note the presence of the drug economy in construction and in rural property.  Even so, our drug crops are still extremely large.   

This is our third year of huge efforts to eradicate coca crops by hand.  Instituting the growing of alternative crops is not easy to do.  For this purpose, I have mentally divided the country into two parts: that where alternative crops are possible, and that we cannot reach because of its distance from land terminals and because it is jungle land and we must protect that jungle.   

The alternative we have found in that case is the Forest Ranger Families.  Fully one-half of Colombia’s one million 160 thousand square kilometer area is covered by jungle land --a resource for mankind of the kind that, in the words of President Correa, has a value, but no price.  And we must find a way to make the world compensate us for that resource.   

The program we are implementing there is the Forest Ranger Families program, made up of families who were destroying the jungle to sow coca.  We have already reached agreements with 50 thousand of them to stop sowing coca and, instead, supervise the recovery of the jungle land. To accomplish this, the State is giving each family two thousand dollars a year and assisting them through the different poverty eradication programs.   

We haven’t reached an ideal point, but we are on the right road.  We have some serious problems.  For example, the Colombian peso has risen 30 percent against the U.S. dollar and the government is fighting to control capital and is barely able to control short-term speculative capital.  To control taxes.  To control foreign exchange.  The country’s experience has been both good and bad.  During the early Lleras Restrepo administration, the results were very good, but since then currency  exchange has been an element of corruption that is very difficult to control.    

As for the violence when we took office –there were 60 thousand terrorists, counting the FARC, the ELN and the paramilitary forces.  The result of four decades of neglect.   

I remember Holy Friday of 1998 when the peace agreement was signed with Northern Ireland.  I asked: how many people are in the IRA?  And they told me: 118.  And I compared this figure with the 60 thousand in Colombia.

How many people have the IRA assassinated, I asked?  And they answered: three thousand two hundred since 1923.  In my city of Medellín alone, five thousand murders were committed in 1998.   

In Spain, they are concerned over 90 or 100 people in the ETA.  We have 60 thousand.   

With one difference, that is expressed when one speaks with our Central American campanions.  With Joaquín Villalobos, for example. I am going to tell my Colombian countrymen that today my political career was given a big boost, because President Morales called me: “compañero.” He promoted me today.  Of course, but I like the other title better, because one is always used and the other not always.   

We were taking a look at the Central American situation.  Joaquín Villalobos, commander of the Farabundo Martí group, with whom I have had a chance to discuss the subject over long hours, states: the Central American guerrillas decided to start negotiating when their external financing dried up --financing that did not come from the Soviet Union or Cuba per se, but from Western European NGOs.

Where does the financing for Colombia’s guerrilla and paramilitary groups come from? From coca.  The Central Americans had financing that was cut off when the key to the flow was turned off.  Ours enjoy growing funding from drug trafficking.   

That has been a serious problem for us.  Even so, of those 60 thousand terrorists, some 43 thousand have been demobilized.  Those who have tried to return to their former activities have not been successful.  Today, for example, the debate over the paramilitary forces is raging in Colombia, but the paramilitary violence has stopped.   

These paramilitary forces were created in response to guerrilla activities that were not being controlled by the State.  This left Colombian regions open to the fight between guerrilla terrorism and paramilitary terrorism.   

I believe we have the best peace law in the world because of its demand for justice, for truth and for reparation.  The benefit it grants is merely a reduced sentence.  And look at the paradox: those who criticize it because they consider it lenient to the paramilitary forces, anticipate that it will not be applicable to the FARC or the ELN because the latter need full amnesties, full pardons.

As you can see, it is a hard battle, but I have faith that we will come out ahead.  

I want to tell you about two events:  the assassination of union leaders and the Government’s recent freeing of some FARC members.   

In the case of the assassination of union leaders, we have to ask ourselves what is really happening, why the impunity and what is the origin of this situation.   

The year right before I became President, 256 people were murdered, among professors and union leaders.   

At the very zero hour of my administration, we started implementing effective protection measures.  Our security policy is democratic.  When we claimed the term democratic to describe our policy it was in an effort to distinguish it in practice from the National Security doctrine, which brings back unpleasant memories.    

We have brought down these assassination figures year by year.  In 2005, there were 25 cases.  In 2006, the situation intensified and the number rose to 60, because in addition to the traditional guerrilla – paramilitary battle, the two guerrilla factions --FARC and ELN-- started killing each other.  FARC forces would burst into a hospital in Arauca:  “This union leader belongs to the ELN” and they would kill him.  Then ELN forces would enter a school in the Cauca:  “This union leader belongs to the FARC” and they would kill him.   

This year, two union leaders have been killed, one belonging to the prison union.  The justice system still claims there is no evidence linking his union activity to his murder.  The other victim was an armed member of a FARC group, which on May 3 was battling Army Forces.  The Army killed several of the FARC insurgents in that action, among them one person who belonged to a labor union in Northern Colombia.   

Furthermore, nine teachers have been murdered in different rural areas of the country.  We are not happy about this situation.  We would like to be able to tell the Andean Community, to tell the world, that no more union leaders are being killed in Colombia.  But we have to ask ourselves where we are coming from.    

Today we are effectively giving six thousand people in Colombia individual protection.  That is costing us 40 million dollars this year.  And of that number, 1,500 are union leaders.   

Why the impunity?  I have stated in all of the national and international forums that Colombia is a country with 42 million inhabitants.  Statistics reveal the existence of from 28 to 30 thousand assassinations a year before we took office.  If we add to this the mass graves unearthed of people murdered between 1998 and 2000, this indicates that there were years when 35 million people were assassinated.   

England, with 60 million inhabitants, has only 200 murders a year.  There is no justice system in the world, with 35 thousand murders in a population of 42 million people, capable of rooting out impunity.   

Even so, we have made every effort to do so:  we reformed the Constitution, we introduced an accusatory penal system, and we have built up the justice system insofar as our limited funds allow.  This year the first 37 sentences have been handed down, condemning 59 people responsible for the assassination of union leaders.    

One of the claims being discussed today is that Colombian or foreign businessmen living in Colombia have assassinated union leaders.  And I have said in response to this: if the justice system of Colombia or of any other country decides that this is the case, then the Government of Colombia will be the first to be on the side of justice.   

As an observer of Colombian life, I do not believe that businessmen have assassinated workers, or that workers have kidnapped businessmen.  This has been a problem involving guerrillas and paramilitary forces.  And of government neglect.   

Marxist guerrillas in Colombia --when I was a university student-- applied the principle of combining the different forms of struggle:  assassinate and penetrate the student movement, kidnap and penetrate the union movement.   

The paramilitary forces arrived on the scene and did the same thing.  Then what happened?  The paramilitary forces assassinated a union leader, accusing him of collaborating with the guerrillas.  And the guerrillas assassinated another, accusing him of collaborating with the paramilitary forces.   

We recognize the full extent of the problem.  As you may recall, some Latin American countries overcame terrorism by cutting off freedoms, eliminating dissent, validating dictatorships, and avoiding criticism and international oversight.  We are a case where this terrorist aggression is being overcome, but open to the world.  Any NGO wishing to come to Colombia to criticize the Government does not even need to ask for a visa.  It is completely free to come in.

What we have done in this fight against terrorism is to protect the people’s freedoms.  That is why I have said to the United States, to the European Union, that they must think about Colombia at this time, when it is overcoming these problems.  People in Colombia did not dare to make accusations against the guerrillas or the paramilitary forces because they were afraid.  Today, everyone does, because they feel that the Government will protect them.

There are now three members of the National Congress in jail.  No one had ever investigated the relationship between politics and the guerrillas.  Today, our Government has demanded that the paramilitary forces submit to the Law of Justice and Peace in order to be benefited.  They must tell the truth about the politicians, the private businessmen, etc. who supported them. Hopefully, the same thing will happen in the future, in the negotiations with the guerrilla forces, because that day will come.

Why has the Government freed 150 members of the FARC and Rodrigo Granda? Please allow me to take a few more minutes of your time, but I think it is very important to answer this, as Colombia once again assumes the Presidency Pro Tempore of the Andean Community.  And I’m telling you this very frankly, esteemed Presidents and Delegations and former President Borja.

When the Asian-American author who wrote “The Castro I knew” visited Cuba and told President Castro: “I have the idea of writing a biography about you,” Castro replied: “You are an Imperialist, you are not capable of treating me objectively.”  And the author answered him: “I don’t promise you total objectivity, but at least a minimum of subjectivity.”   

I want to tell you, with the greatest of esteem --you are my brothers and to some extent you are suffering its effects-- about Colombia’s true situation, with a minimum of subjectivity.    

When I took office, Dr. Ingrid Betancourt, who has French citizenship as well, had been kidnapped.  As a Presidential candidate, my stand was inflexible, but I gradually softened my position in an effort to reach a humanitarian agreement.   

Last year, we accepted the proposal put forward by two European delegates to establish a 200 kilometer area for a meeting area with the FARC --an enormously risky proposal, but one that we accepted for humanitarian reasons.  But the FARC lied.  The European Union had told us: “We made this proposal to the Government and to the FARC.” First, the FARC claimed the proposal had not been made and afterwards stated that they did