Colombia: the Lies that Have Been Created Around the “Total Peace” of Gustavo Petro

“We will leave the war behind, and we will finally enter an era of peace”, is one of the sections that appears in the government program used by the current president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, during his electoral campaign.

According to this point (which was the fifth and last of his political plan),"peace is a new social contract to guarantee the fundamental rights of the people, in particular of the victims.”

Read also: Gallery: These are the ministers of Gustavo Petro

However, in the middle of the official document of the Petro campaign, there is a very specific word that complements “peace” and that today has been heard a lot in the middle of the speeches, both by Petro and his ministerial cabinet: "total"; that is to say “a total peace” .

“We will strengthen the various citizens as social and political subjects in an effort to consolidate total peace”, is the fragment that become the light and north of the Petro government in Colombia.

What is Total Peace?

Although very little was heard about this phrase in the middle of the campaign, Petro took it upon himself to mention it several times during his inaugural speech on August 7. Two of the 21 pages that the Colombian president read in front of thousands of people in the Plaza de Bolívar had as their central theme the need to achieve “total peace” in a country as ravaged by war as the one he presides over today. “This is the government of life, of peace, and that is how it will be remembered,” he said on that occasion.

However, there is still little knowledge about this political and social project, with which Petro intends to eliminate once and for all the illegal groups that operate today in Colombia, and considerably reduce the rates of violence in that country.

Of course, this situation has led to many "fake news' in relation to total peace and the way in which the Government wants to seek it.

Thinking about this, in LatinAmerican Post we will make a brief account of what total peace would be, based on Gustavo Petro's own government plan and the brushstrokes that other government actors have outlined on this issue. In this way, we will also seek to clarify some of the main lies that revolve in social networks about this political project.

"Peace will be negotiated with the ELN in the midst of the armed war." Lie.

According to Petro's plan, the idea is to create "the conditions to advance in an effective dialogue and negotiation with the ELN within the framework of the generation of large 50 national consensuses and support from the international community, which collects the lessons learned from the Final Peace Agreement with the FARC”.

Now, in the midst of this news, false information has been generated after Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva assured that what was agreed upon with the ELN would be implemented in real time, even with this group still in arms.

“With the gentlemen 'elenos' to the extent that it is agreed, it is applied. That is why the humanitarian dialogues must be put into motion immediately from that first acceptance of them, which are the humanitarian dialogues already in Chocó”, said Leyva Durán.

Upon hearing these words, several opponents assured that the negotiation could not be carried out, or at least not under those conditions, arguing that it would be a “process in the middle of the war.”

In contrast, Defense Minister Iván Velásquez assured that although the ELN continues to be up in arms during the negotiations, this does not mean that the war will continue. Moreover, in a conversation with Cambio magazine, he spoke of establishing a bilateral ceasefire and desisting from all illegal activity by the guerrillas. “All criminal activity carried out by these organizations would have to cease” to hold peace talks, was what Velásquez said.

“The State will be the only one to blame for the war. Lie

Recently, a document was disclosed that was passed before the Congress of the Republic, in which there is talk of a “reception to justice” that will be proposed to multicrime groups in Colombia.

Although the controversy has also been generated by the possible “impunity” towards the violent actors of the country, the truth is that a controversy of form and ideology has stood out, considering, on the part of the opposition, that the fostering will impose a radical thought that the state is entirely to blame for the war.

To correct this mistake, it is enough to go to the document that today resides in the Colombian parliament, in which, as the opposition alleges, it does speak of the guilt of the State in the violence, but also of the non-transferable responsibility of multi-crime groups in the country:

"The shelter is based on social, legal and political principles (…) where the social subject assumes its responsibility as an offender of the legal order, but at the same time the State recognizes its guilt in the historical debt around the absence and lack of guarantees that it should have provided to the subject of law, fostering in him negative behaviors to transgress the norm.”

"Cocaine will be legalized." Lie.

Finally, it should be mentioned that, although Petro has mentioned “regulation” in his speech as a way to counteract the scourge of drug trafficking, the truth is that said legalization will not be of psychoactive substances, but of the plants that are used to its creation.

"The beneficial uses that products derived from cannabis and the coca leaf can have will be investigated, promoting an important productive sector that involves the State, the private sector and cooperative and community forms for the national and international economy,” explains the plan. Petro's government.