For
the umpteenth time Colombian president Álvaro Uribe is
going to the United States to promote the so much wanted
Free Trade Treaty. I quite lost count of the amount of these
promotion tours and really don’t understand what the use is of
this Holy Crusade.
Imagine,
in less than two months the Americans are going to choose their new
president. The two candidates are delivering a mortal and filthy
combat to gain the public’s approval. In this whole matter the
Free Trade Treaty with Colombia just is not important. The pregnancy
of ms. Palin’s daughter has moved more pens in the United
States than Colombia all together.
But
the government of this tumultuous country doesn’t seem to
understand this.
It
is like a creed, a Holy Cause in this Country, to support the Free
Trade Treaty. You just don’t question, you go for it. In the
influential Colombian media I have never seen an article which
exposes the advantages and disadvantages, the supporters and the
opponents of the treaty, in a quiet and objective way. I am not an
economist but I am sure there are good arguments to approve or
disapprove of it. But disapproving is almost like supporting the
leftist guerrilla movement FARC: it is not patriotic and it is like
High Treason.
President
Uribe was furious when his political opponents went to the United
States to promote the DISapproval of the treaty. Well, they did
exactly what he did and perhaps they did it better. Many Democrats
started to say they are against the treaty because of the violations
of human rights in Colombia.
To
be frank I am not very impressed by this argument. How many countries
have been supported and are still supported by the United States in
one or another way, where the human rights were violated in a much
worse way than in Colombia?
But
it is a thing the Colombian government has to deal with and instead
of quarreling with the Justice Courts and accusing his political
opponents of all kinds of obscure things, president Uribe would do
better to calm down, stay at home and do what he always says he does:
reinforce the Colombian democracy. Perhaps it works for the Free
Trade Treaty as well.
