The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, Colombians largest and oldest insurgent group, are urging Colombians to abstain from voting in the upcoming presidential elections on Sunday.
In a letter signed by the FARC’s ruling secretariat, dated May 2010 from the “Colombian mountains,” the FARC argues Colombians should boycott the election because all of the candidates “promise more military spending and war.”
The letter also slams the candidates for not raising “issues that are vital to the nation in the deep abyss of inequality and terror.”
“The proposals, programs and commitments to the nation,” the letter goes on, “have been replaced by the grotesque and vulgar attack.”
The FARC goes on to call the last eight years during the administration of President Alvaro Uribe, in which the left-wing insurgent group has lost its once dominant position, a “dark and lethal period” that will “never be erased from the history of Colombia.”
The FARC, however, were not referring to the change in tide in its battle against the central government. Instead, they were speaking of the various scandals that have recently come to light surrounding the Uribe administration, such as issue the “false positives” extrajudicial killings by the military of innocent civilians, and Uribe’s “ties to narco-traffickers and paramilitaries,” which they cite as evidence that corruption is “bubbling in every corner of the presidential palace.”
The letter does not mention any candidates in particular.
In April, the FARC released a similar statement in which they said all Colombian presidential candidates will offer a “continuity” of Uribe’s policies, and offer no hope for solving the country’s problems.
The statement said that none of the candidates would “offer a real solution to the national problems,” nor a “change of course,” as all of the candidates are “neo-liberal,” calling Partido de la U’s candidate Juan Manuel Santos a “new paramilitary ruler,” and saying that the Green Party’s Antanas Mockus represents a rising middle-class focused on acquiring big “infrastructure projects.”