It was a simple event. The senator and presidential candidate went up to an improvised platform on June 7 in the El Golfito park, in the Bogotá neighborhood of Modelia, and took the microphone to present his health proposals and to improve the situation of people with disabilities. and one more on the left knee interrupted the speech abruptly. After spending two months in critical condition, Uribe Turbay died on August 11. The campaigns in Colombia had not yet formally begun, but it was a warning of what was to come.
Just last February, three kidnappings shook the country: that of the indigenous senator and now candidate for vice president; that of Andrés Vásquez, candidate for the Senate; and that of Ana Guetio, aspiring to occupy one of the so-called peace seats, seats specifically created to guarantee the representation of victims of violence. In the end, they were all released within hours. In addition, that same month two bodyguards of Senator Jairo Castellanos were shot. And on March 4, four days before, the candidate for deputy María Bolívar Maury reported that her convoy was attacked by gunfire.
“We are facing the most violent electoral process since the signing of the final peace agreement in 2016, but not in the last 20 years because before there was a lot of violence as well,” he says (Bogotá, 48 years old), in an interview during a work trip through Madrid last Wednesday. In the midst of an electoral hangover due to the legislative elections and while the South American country is debating between continuity or change in the face of the first presidential round next May, Marín unravels the complex phenomenon of political violence, puts the emphasis on the most vulnerable groups and calls for harmony among all the forces in the fray.
“Our main concern is the freedom of voters and to campaign in certain regions,” says Marín about the challenges leading up to the presidential elections. Added to the threats and attacks against the candidates are the pressures and intimidation faced by the population, especially in the most affected parts of the territory. “There are areas where criminal governance prevails and that State institutions are not capable of controlling,” he says. “The population of these areas cannot participate on equal terms with the rest,” he adds. Violence does not impact everyone equally: women and candidates for peace seats are the ones at greatest risk, explains the defender.
“The armed groups have been strengthening, not only during that government, but in the last six years,” says Marín. The official points to the territorial expansion of these organizations and an increasingly fragmented criminal map as two of the main factors behind the violence. What is at stake for criminal forces in the elections is maintaining the control they have over those territories. “They need territorial governance to maintain their control over the population and dominance of resources and legal and illegal economies,” he says. “It doesn’t matter whether the candidates are from the right or the left.”
Therefore, in most cases, electoral violence is a local phenomenon. Although international attention is focused on the presidential elections, criminal organizations focus on the legislative elections, especially the elections for the House of Representatives and the peace seats. “Because they are what define local power, which is the power of armed groups,” he explains. The northeast is crossed by disputes between two narco-paramilitary forces, the Conquistadors of the Sierra, while on the border with Venezuela, Chocó, the Colombian Pacific and Antioquia the struggle is between several dissidents of the extinct FARC guerrilla, although other groups affect other regions, Marín explains.
The Ombudsman’s Office has issued recommendations to the public Administration to counteract the influence of armed groups in the electoral process and guarantee the protection of participants. However, Marín assures that only 41% of them have been fulfilled and that this has had a direct impact on the ground. While a first electoral alert report, published in October, identified 62 municipalities in the country at extreme risk before the vote, by January that number rose to 69. In total, more than 600 municipalities of the little more than 1,100 in the country present some type of risk of violence and electoral fraud.
Marín maintains that last Sunday’s votes have managed to overcome the doubts that existed about the transparency and organization of the elections, despite the accusations of fraud that the president has launched. “Once again the capacity of the Colombian electoral system to hold elections is confirmed. It seems obvious to say it, but there were doubts about it on the part of the national government,” he says.
The security crisis in the country has been one of the issues that have dominated the campaigns. The policy of total peace has been one of the main bets of the Petro Government and it advocates negotiating in parallel with all illegal armed groups to find a way out of the violence. The strategy has not been exempt from questions by those who claim the lack of tangible results, deficiencies in planning and the political legitimation of criminal organizations. At the other extreme, as has been the constant throughout Latin America, the voices of those who defend heavy-handed policies are multiplying.
“I am concerned about easy and simplistic solutions to a historical and complex problem, and elections are a favorable environment to satisfy an exhausted public,” says Marín, who has not hidden his doubts about Petro’s policy, but also views proposals at the opposite extreme with skepticism. “The balance of this Government in terms of peacebuilding and violence prevention is very bittersweet: armed groups have expanded and crimes against the population have increased; although attacks attributable to public forces have been reduced, that is positive,” he points out.
The defender, on the other hand, notes that the current Administration has been “bold” in its social policy. “I would highlight all the efforts to confront social inequality, that is definitely a positive point,” he says. “Colombia has a historical debt with equality, which is a human right,” he adds.
Marín, the first woman to head the Ombudsman’s Office, also highlights the deficit in terms of the political representation of women. There were only 41% of female candidates for Congress and around 70% of the elected candidates are men, he adds. “It is very difficult for us to make our way, there are very few of us who reach the first decision-making levels of the State,” she says.
“If there is continuity with the left-wing government,” he points out about the controversy surrounding total peace, “it is important that an evaluation and redirection be made, and not simply say ‘we are going to continue along the same lines.'” “On the right side, the problem is that they say ‘any process of talks is over and we are going to go from total peace to total war,’” he adds, adding that it would not be easy to transition to a contrary policy in reality, even if that were the strategy of the next Government. “In Colombia we have not ended any violent process through war, that would only bring more suffering to the population if that were the strategy,” he warns.
