Samper’s Staying Power Stirs Fears of Repression

Hours after the Colombian Congress earlier this month cleared President Ernesto Samper of ties to drug traffickers, he vowed to spearhead a movement for national reconciliation.

Yet many Colombians fear that “reconciliation” is a code word for whitewash and even repression by an administration determined to stay in power despite evidence that the president’s 1994 campaign was financed by millions of dollars in drug money.

Other observers worry that repression may not even be needed as jaded Colombians simply allow Samper to remain in office. That could leave Colombia saddled with an ineffectual, discredited president at a time when the country desperately needs a leader to make peace with its guerrillas and crack down on crime, particularly drug trafficking, they warn.

The president’s opponents find themselves reluctantly looking to U.S. pressure to remove Samper. Americans have threatened to raise duties on Colombian exports to the United States unless this country steps up efforts against narcotics traffickers. Because of evidence that Samper received campaign contributions from drug lords, there is little confidence that he will lead such an effort.

Samper had hinted that he might step down if accusations against him were dropped. But he quickly backtracked on that suggestion after Congress, dominated by his Liberal Party, voted to halt the investigation into his campaign finances for lack of proof.

Still, many observers, even inside the government, believe that the current, tarnished administration cannot stay in office until the regularly scheduled election in two years. “This government cannot sustain itself,” said one senior official. “The situation is serious.”

Fears of repression were fed last week when an enemies list surfaced. A memorandum, supposedly prepared by outside consultants to the national intelligence agency, known by the initials DAS, outlined strategies for neutralizing dozens of possible government opponents. They ranged from journalists to Cabinet members, including Foreign Minister Rodrigo Pardo, a childhood friend of Samper, and Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano, commander of the National Police.

Intelligence officials dismissed the memo as “apocryphal.”

But Daniel Coronel, a broadcast news director and one of the journalists on the list, said of the memo: “If it is not real, it sounds quite close to reality. The government has put the state organizations at the service of staying in power. . . . We are on the road to authoritarianism.”

A senior government official said the threat of a government crackdown has dampened the public outcry against Samper. “People are afraid of a repressive, police reaction,” he said. “The DAS has been used in the past to intimidate people.”

A decade ago, journalists said, both the intelligence agency and the army were used to intimidate government critics. In that period, television journalist Olga Behar was accused of transporting arms to guerrillas; her home was searched by 40 soldiers who pulled up one morning before dawn, she said. Despite a presidential apology, she decided to go into exile in Mexico because the government could not assure her safety.

While opponents say that fear of reprisals is behind the public’s failure to protest, they also acknowledge that Samper is still a tremendously popular president with a 40% approval rating, among the highest in Latin America, according to the latest polls.

“We cannot ignore that a large part of the population has been tricked into believing that this is a conspiracy of the Americans and the domestic bourgeoisie,” said Adolfo Salamanca, the assistant prosecutor who has pursued investigations that have landed eight members of Congress, the attorney general and assistant attorney general in jail on drug-related corruption charges.

Ironically, such an alliance may be all that can remove Samper from power, observers said.

“The president can easily resist his opposition with support from the military,” said political analyst Rodrigo Losada. “But if the United States imposes sanctions that hit hard at specific sectors of the economy, such as flower exports and air transport, businessmen could organize company shutdowns that would force the president to step down. Otherwise, Samper will finish out his term.”

Nearly 40 years have passed since business interests took such decisive action for political reasons, toppling the dictatorship of Gen. Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. The result was an alliance between the Liberal and Conservative parties, known as the National Front, which lasted until the Conservatives pulled out of Samper’s administration earlier this year.

Many observers question whether business could again be as effective. “The opposition is split by very different interests and very different goals, and those divisions give Samper a lot of room to maneuver,” said Eduardo Pizarro, an analyst at the National University.

In fact, the National Business Council, one of the powerful groups that had called for Samper’s resignation, last week announced a truce with the president. The council stated in a news release that it will give him another chance to put in place stiffer penalties against drug traffickers and other criminals; he had originally proposed these in 1994 and resubmitted them to Congress after he was cleared. Unless law and order are imposed, the statement warned, “we will continue to be an internationally repudiated nation, and that will generate a great frustration among Colombians.”

How that frustration might be vented remains unclear. A protest against government corruption, planned for June 19, never materialized. Analysts recognize that a lack of political involvement is one of the major challenges that Colombia faces in overcoming the current crisis.

“The proof of that is that the prosecutor’s office has been forced to take the lead” in combating corruption, said one government official.

Salamanca vowed that prosecutors will continue their investigation into political corruption and links to drugs. In fact, the day after Samper was cleared, the eighth member of Congress was arrested on drug-related charges. On June 19, the assistant attorney general was jailed for alleged corruption. Formal charges against a senator are pending, Salamanca said.

“To do otherwise would be to lose the last opportunity to throw out an administration that is largely tied to criminals,” he said. “It would be to allow delinquents to take over our society.”