Doubts Swirl Around Colombian Leader

President Andres Pastrana is trying to do everything right, but it’s turning out all wrong.

In his first year in office, Pastrana has improved Colombia’s abysmal relations with the United States, which has nearly tripled anti-drug aid to his country. He has started peace talks to end 35 years of civil war and moved to straighten out eight years of mismanaged government budgets.

But Colombia’s cocaine production is rising, the war is intensifying, and the country has had to ask for a loan from the International Monetary Fund for the first time. Polls show that Pastrana’s popularity has dropped below the nadir of his scandal-plagued predecessor, Ernesto Samper.

Increasingly, people are doing more than just griping to pollsters: They are trying to leave, U.S. and Colombian officials say. And the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service is agreeing that their fears merit asylum, having granted the status to 71 Colombians between October and March--40% of the applicants. Until then, the asylum approval rate for Colombians had been under 15%.

Pastrana recently insisted to a small group of foreign journalists: “You do not judge a leader by his first year. You judge him at the end of four years.”

But the question is, can this president, whose term began with such high expectations, hold his battered country together through three more years of violence and economic upheaval?

Pastrana gets high marks from analysts for facing up to problems that have been brewing for decades.

“This is the first government to acknowledge that we need help,” said private economist Juan Jose Echevarria. “We have a problem. We have a war. . . . At least Pastrana is trying.”

It is less clear whether the president has a strategy for actually solving the problems, be they related to drugs, war or the economy--and whether he can successfully tackle all three sets at the same time.

After visiting Colombia earlier this month, a high-level U.S. delegation returned home with a warning that Pastrana must develop a plan if aid from Washington--$289 million this year--is to increase.

“What really is necessary is that the Colombian government, over the next couple of weeks, weave all of [its counter-narcotics efforts] into a comprehensive strategy,” Undersecretary of State Thomas R. Pickering said upon his return from Colombia.

That, he said, “would be key to how and in what way we should recommend to the secretary, to the president, and I hope eventually to the Congress, if they agree, additional support for Colombia.”

On Monday, the Clinton administration signaled that Colombia may be close to formulating the strategy that Washington requires. It said it is considering increasing the foreign aid package to Colombia to support a more robust counter-narcotics effort.

“Colombia is working on [a] comprehensive strategy to address the interrelated problems confronting it,” State Department spokesman James B. Foley said Monday, adding that it is premature to “discuss specific amounts at this point.”

On peace, Pastrana’s main campaign issue, the rebels “have permanently had the initiative, and the government reacts,” military security expert Alfredo Rangel said recently. “If that is a strategy, then he has a strategy.”

A foreigner who has closely followed the peace process was slightly more generous.

“He has a concept,” this observer said of Pastrana, adding with a wince, “But is there a game plan?”

Tuesday, even the illegal right-wing private armies that oppose the insurgents appeared to be taking the initiative. In an interview with the Radionet radio station, Carlos Castano--who heads the self-defense forces, as they call themselves--offered to meet with guerrilla leader Manuel Marulanda and proposed a cease-fire among all parties.

Alejo Vargas, vice rector of the National University of Colombia, said that the president has offered conflicting strategies.

“Pastrana’s great contradiction is to suppose that he can make peace and, at the same time, do an International Monetary Fund-style economic readjustment, with the social costs that implies,” he said.

Meanwhile, Colombians feel increasingly insecure--both economically and physically. Fighting among three leftist rebel groups, the right-wing private armies and the Colombian armed forces has spread from the countryside toward the cities. Last month, members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, the country’s oldest and largest insurgent movement, skirmished with the army just outside Bogota, the capital.

Three months before, the No. 2 guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, hijacked a commercial flight, proving that travelers who take planes to avoid rebel roadblocks and abduction--an important revenue source for the insurgents--may not always be safe either.

While wealthy and middle-class city dwellers fear kidnapping, the rural poor and human rights activists are terrorized by massacres and assassinations, respectively. Rebels and their right-wing foes have killed 852 civilians so far this year, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Further, the situation shows every sign of getting worse.

“Let’s not kid ourselves--the FARC is getting ready for a significant escalation,” Rangel warned.

Peace talks with the FARC collapsed July 30, a few weeks after overtures to the ELN failed. Nevertheless, Pastrana expressed confidence that a solution is possible.

“What is most important is that there is a commitment,” the president said. “The problems we have faced are small ones that cannot be allowed to put the peace process in danger.”

A mere gesture from the rebels--something as simple as a Christmas truce, which the insurgents have never offered--would be enough to inspire public confidence again, he said.

Part of the problem with the peace process has been overconfidence, said Vargas, the university vice rector.

“The media generate unrealistic expectations,” he said. “The message for the citizenry is that peace is just around the corner.”

On the contrary, he predicted, peace talks will take at least five years, and fighting will continue through much of that time.

“The distance between the government and the guerrilla leaders is huge,” he said.

“The government believes it’s just a matter of demobilization and reinserting the guerrillas into society,” Vargas said. “The FARC still believe that socialism is possible. They think they can win.”

Pastrana said of the rebels’ expectations: “They have been up in the hills for 40 years. The FARC [leaders] need to see the world.”

Colombia’s economic problems are unlikely to be solved much more quickly, economist Echevarria warned. Unemployment is approaching 20%, a record for the nation.

“It’s difficult to believe that the unemployment rate is going to change soon,” Echevarria said. “These are long-term problems.”

Most of them go back to 1991, when the new constitution gave local governments a bigger share of the national budget.

“That has not been accompanied by a transfer of responsibilities, as it should have been,” said Juan Mario Laserna, the vice minister of finance. “There has been an enormous disorder in the financing of the provinces and cities.”

Local governments mainly used the money for patronage, inflating payrolls and public works contracts. The result has been a $25-billion deficit for government entities, Laserna said. Most local governments are broke. Half are behind on their pension payments to retirees.

The Pastrana administration has proposed a budget that will give local governments more responsibility for services, force them to save for their employee pensions and give them more power to raise funds by running lotteries, for example.

“These are new mechanisms for empowerment,” Laserna said.

In addition, they are mechanisms for discipline, he acknowledged. The national government has also disciplined itself, starting with its income and how it distributes it. Previous budgets were based on spending, with the government scrambling to find ways to pay for bureaucratic wish lists--usually by borrowing, he said.

This new fiscal approach is certain to cause more difficulties in a country that has not suffered a recession since the 1930s, Echevarria said. In the 1980s, when the rest of Latin America was mired in international debt, Colombia averaged 5% annual growth.

But this year, the economy will probably shrink about 0.5%, Echevarria predicted, although the government is publicly predicting 1% growth.

The timing is terrible, Vargas said.

“The government cannot negotiate with the guerrillas at the same time it carries out social policy with a club,” he said. Cutting back government spending will make the administration appear insensitive to the poor, which is exactly what the rebels claim it is, he said.

“They want to compartmentalize, as if one thing had nothing to do with the other,” Vargas said.

Pastrana’s position is that the reforms cannot wait.

“We have to clean up the house now that the party is over,” he said, referring to the spendthrift policies of his predecessors. “We are trying to pull the country out of bankruptcy.”

Significantly, the new budget was introduced before the government began negotiating with the IMF last week for a $3-billion loan. Rather than blaming unpopular reforms on the international financial institution, which often forces countries to tighten their belts in order to get credits, Pastrana is taking the responsibility himself.

“These are not measures that the IMF is imposing but that we have to put in place,” he said.

Pastrana clearly believes this is the right thing to do. The question is whether it too will turn out wrong.

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Times staff writers Esther Schrader and Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.