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AAlthough at the end of this edition there was no official result and the world was still in suspense, pending to know the name of the new tenant of the White House, with the passing of the hours the probabilities pointed more towards a triumph of Joe Biden, the candidate Democrat, than to a re-election of Donald Trump.
Y Although Biden was cataloged throughout the campaign by his adversary as a leftist radical and even as a Castro-Chavista, experts consulted by Vanguardia agreed that, in case of winning the elections, the arrival of the former vice president would not bring drastic changes in the relationship between States. United with Colombia. It is estimated that the agenda on sensitive issues such as drugs, human rights, corruption, the environment and the peace agreement would be deepened.
The bipartisan nature of the relationship between the two countries has allowed the Colombian government to work hand in hand with both Democrats and Republicans, and therefore, the binational bond will continue to be strong.
“For the Uribistas it will not be so good (Biden), but they will accommodate. Our policy has always been bipartisan, “says Rubén Sánchez, professor at the Faculty of Political Science, Government and International Relations at the Universidad del Rosario.
From his point of view, the change of command in the US will bring some news, among them a greater concern for the environment and respect for human rights, especially the condemnation of the crimes of social leaders.
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Between January 1 and November 17 of this year, 226 activists and human rights defenders have been assassinated in the country.
At the same time, another controversial issue is spraying with glyphosate, a herbicide considered carcinogenic by the World Health Organization, WHO.
In this regard, Sánchez points out that Biden has disagreed with this method to combat illicit crops that has been in the country for more than 25 years (five of them suspended), which could generate certain friction with the government of Iván Duque.
It must be remembered that Colombia is the main world cultivator of coca leaf, with 169,000 hectares planted in 2018 and a potential to produce 1,120 tons of cocaine, according to the United Nations.
Now, Sánchez also clarifies that the handling of these issues on the binational agenda will also depend on who Biden would appoint as Secretary of State and as National Security Advisor.
Cooperation and not subordination
It would be a “relationship of cooperation and not of subordination”, as Donald Trump contemplated it, sums up Carlos Andrés Pérez, a researcher at the John W. McCormack School of Politics and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Boston (USA).
In Colombia, he points out, there is great expectation, especially regarding aspects that had been working on the agenda before Trump’s arrival, that is, specific issues such as peace agreement and cooperation on drugs.
“There may be an interesting twist in how the Democrats will approach, not only the fight against drugs, but the political and economic background behind it,” says Pérez.
Human rights and social leaders have always been on the Democratic agenda, underlines the researcher, who explains that they are issues correlated with binational cooperation.
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In that sense, he does not rule out greater pressure from a possible Democratic government, a special control so that the murders are clarified, which would lead to the Colombian government having to decisively take action on the matter.
In fact, Pérez warns of an important impact that could affect the commercial relationship between the two countries, if President Duque ignores the problem.
Regarding the peace agreement with the extinct FARC guerrilla, Pérez considers that the democrats have been very sensitive to this issue, especially the commitments derived from it.
“There will not only be pressure, but also monitoring and surveillance of these pacts, something that may have repercussions not only on internal issues in Colombia but also on bilateral agreements with the US, particularly of a commercial nature,” he says.
Finally, he alludes to the fact that a change of government in the United States could have effects is the resumption of environmental agreements to which that country had committed before the arrival of Trump, and that points to greater cooperation in matters of environment and climate change, where Colombia and the region play an important role, especially due to the situation in the Amazon.
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