Former Ambassador Gabriel Silva criticizes Uribe’s letter to Biden

On the weekend the former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez presented, in an extensive document, his analysis of the election of Joseph Biden as president of the United States and the challenges surrounding the relationship with Colombia. Gabriel Silva, former Defense Minister, said in an interview for Caracol Radio that Uribe’s words are an attempt to amend “the gaffe” of his party, the Democratic Center, when he decided to bet all the cards on Donald Trump.

For Gabriel Silva, the letter from Uribe a Biden tries to give foreign policy lessons to the new president of the United States, action that does not correspond. Deep down, he notes, Uribe is telling Biden that Colombia remains in league with Donald Trump. These proposals are possibly given with a view to the coincidence of the presidential candidacies of Colombia with the beginning of those of the United States in 2022.

This is a trap calls on the Democrats to support the Peace Process and part of the responsibility for the polarization of the plebiscite. “When the ‘No’ won in the plebiscite, the United States, with the authority of having upheld the Havana agreement, could play an important role for the national pact that we proposed, but they did not do so,” the former president wrote.

For Gabriel Silva, Uribe tries to justify his position and that of the Democratic Center with respect to the peace accords, since broke with the country’s bilateral tradition. The exaggerations that the former president presented in his letter, Silva points out, delve further into the problem he created for Colombian foreign policy.

He also referred to the anti-narcotics policy and ensuring the participation of Democrats in financing the voluntary reconversion of illicit crops and the peace accords. Silva also considers that the attitude of this new presidential term of the United States will be more comprehensive. The national government must have a repressive politics with organized crime Y constructive for social development of the communities involved in illicit crops. He also suggested to President Duque change their attitude towards a consensus among governments.

He assured that Uribe criticizes the strategy of seeking peace to end violence and drug trafficking.

In addition, the former minister stressed that, at the beginning of Iván Duque’s presidential term, Trump “gave orders and scolded him in public”, believing that coercive policies were the solution. The path with Biden will be different, since the possibility of reaching agreements through policies built between the two countries opens up.

Similarly, during the Trump administration, Silva stated, there was a kind of complicit silence regarding the deterioration of the defense of human rights in the country “And in the institutional behavior of the forces.” The intolerance of social protest, the murder of social leaders and massacres are part of that ‘iceberg’ that interested Trump very little, but that the Democrats will take into account.

Silva concluded by emphasizing that bipartisan politics are key to relations of the current and future presidency of Colombia with the United States.