Violence Intensifies in Colombian Strike

Police wielding nightsticks clashed with protesters here Tuesday in an increasingly violent weeklong strike by public employees opposed to free-market reforms the government says are essential to rescuing Colombia’s economy.

Strikers threw stones, and police replied with water cannons and nightsticks, trying to clear protesters from areas around public buildings. Tensions are expected to escalate today, when protesters plan to occupy the capital’s main plaza.

The government insists that the measures the unions are protesting--including tax and budget changes and the divestiture of state-owned companies--are needed to strengthen Colombia’s economy to confront the spreading global crisis.

Many analysts believe that Colombia would be especially vulnerable to an attack on its currency as the economic malaise that has swept Asia and Russia infects Latin America. The peso was already devalued 23% last month.

The prices of Colombia’s major export commodities--oil, coffee and coal--have tumbled, and lending from abroad to cover the national budget deficit has left the economy weak. Nevertheless, the 850,000 members of public employee unions oppose the reforms. They are also decrying a proposal for a 14% pay raise, which would be less than the 15% inflation projected for this year.

“This is generating a process of unemployment and misery,” said Tarsisio Mora, strike coordinator and head of the 280,000-member national teachers union. To make their point, strikers have clogged downtown traffic with marches for the past week. Today, Mora said, they plan “to take Bogota”--or, more specifically, the city’s historic Plaza Bolivar.

The administration of President Andres Pastrana, which took office in August, insists that all the measures are essential to saving an economy battered by four years of government overspending and threatened by the spreading international economic crisis.

Pastrana’s predecessor, Ernesto Samper, propped up his embattled presidency with concessions to public employees. As a result, many of the free-market reforms undertaken throughout Latin America were stalled in Colombia, and the national budget deficit grew.

Now members of Pastrana’s economic team say they must take on the unpleasant tasks that Samper shirked.

Among the most controversial proposals is a plan to lower the value-added tax to 15% from 16%, while expanding the range of taxable items to include processed food, such as canned goods. In addition, the government says it will continue selling off banks and other enterprises.

Public employee unions in other countries have unsuccessfully tried to halt similar reforms by their governments, managing at most to delay sales and other measures. Mora said his union will succeed because “we have the arguments to prove that this is negative for the government and society.”

Nevertheless, some employees defected from the strike after a Labor Ministry ruling that telephone company workers and employees of government-owned banks could not legally participate.

Bank workers slipped into their offices under police escort at dawn Tuesday without incident but were trapped inside, not sure how they would leave as angry strikers gathered outside. Protesters noticed as telephone company employees went to work, and began throwing stones.