Colombia, 2007

Allow me to congratulate Mr. Kerim on his election as

President of the General Assembly and to wish him the

greatest success in his work.

After five years in office, we come to the General

Assembly once again to inform members on issues

crucial to Colombian democracy.

We have rejected the dismantling of the State and

refuse to enter into a statism that would wither private

initiative. We have reformed 420 State entities and are

determined to work to that end until the last day of our

Government. We seek a more efficient State at the

service of the community and not owned by political

machinations, union excesses or interest groups.

We are committed to the development of an

entrepreneurial society, in opposition to State or private

monopolies, in a nation with a consensus centred on

productivity, discipline and equity. We provide every

space for private initiative with social responsibility,

which must be expressed in the transparency of

relations between investors and the State, in

entrepreneurial solidarity with the community beyond

the legal minimums, and in labour relations framed by

fraternity, contrary to savage capitalism and class

struggle.

In sectors such as electricity, metallurgy and

health, we have encouraged participatory trade

unionism, with simultaneous responsibility in the

social field and entrepreneurial management, distinct

from traditional entitlement organization. We have

increased by 40 per cent the affiliation of workers to

social security through the improved performance of

the economy and our fight against evasion. In the past

five years, the minimum wage has grown by 8 per cent

above inflation. Our per capita income has gone from

$1,851 to $3,517. After adjustment in terms of

purchasing power, it has increased from $6,468 to

$9,456. For the first time in decades, the Gini

coefficient of income distribution has started to

improve.

From the first day of my Government, with our

democratic security policy we made the decision not to

tolerate the murder of any Colombian and to defeat

impunity. The security situation has improved

substantially. In 2002, Colombia suffered 29,000

homicides, of which 196 were perpetrated against trade

unionists, and we closed 2006 with a 40 per cent

reduction in general violence and a 70 per cent

reduction in violence against trade unionists. This year,

there are 6,714 Colombians with individual protection

from the State, of which almost 1,200 are workers

belonging to trade unions, at a budgetary cost of almost

$39 million.

In our struggle against impunity, between the

budgets for 2002 and 2008 we will have increased the

resources for the judicial branch and for the Attorney

General’s office by 76 per cent and 78 per cent,

respectively. The budget for the special unit of the

Attorney General’s office devoted to cases of the

murder of trade unionists has increased by 40 per cent.

The unit oversees more than 300 cases prioritized by

trade union movements.

The fight against impunity for the murder of

unionized workers is being carried out under the

guidelines of the International Labour Organization

(ILO), in agreement between Government, workers and

employers. Reports on the progress made, submitted by

the ILO office in Colombia, have been positive.

Allow me to affirm before the United Nations

that murders and kidnappings have been the work of

terrorists. First, it was the Marxist guerrillas who, in

introducing their perverse scheme of a so-called

combination of all forms of struggle, murdered,

kidnapped and penetrated sectors of workers, students,

politicians and journalists. Then came the

paramilitaries, and they did the same, murdering

workers and accusing them of collaborating with the

guerrillas, which in reciprocity murdered those whom

they believed to be friends with the paramilitaries. In

certain parts of the country, the confrontation between

the two guerrilla factions that still exist leads to the

murder of workers.

Overcoming that scourge once and for all is an

inalienable objective of our democratic security policy.

In that regard, our three Government objectives are to

consolidate democratic security, strengthen investor

confidence, and achieve our social programme, which

is more ambitious than the millennium social goals that

we hope to meet before the date set by the United

Nations.

With regard to democratic security, we are

winning, but we have not won yet. With persistence

and transparency, Colombia will overcome terrorism

financed by illicit drugs. We have a long-lived,

respectable and ever-deepening democracy. We are

approaching the fifth electoral contest presided over by

my Government, and the transparency and

effectiveness of the guarantees offered to all

contenders are increasingly evident. There are 86,347

registered candidates of 235 different political origins

to fill 18,332 posts by direct election. This is

happening in a country that, five years ago, was facing

60,000 terrorists, and where about 11,000 still remain.

To fight them, we deepen democracy instead of

restricting it, protect liberties instead of suppressing

them, and stimulate dissent instead of silencing it. Our

fight against terrorism is being observed by national

and international critics, who can be in the country and

say what they please without restriction.

Our democratic practice gives us the political

authority to say that those who take up arms financed

by illicit drugs are not insurgents against oppression

but terrorists against liberty. We will not refuse to

negotiate with them if they cease their violent actions,

but we will not allow for negotiation to become a trap

that enables the destruction of our democracy. We have

achieved the demobilization of 46,000 members of

different factions and we are carrying out a costly and

complex reintegration process with them that requires

truth, justice and redress for the victims.

Thus, I now turn to the humanitarian agreement

to free kidnapped people being held by terrorists of the

Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia

Ejército del Pueblo (FARC). Most of those were

kidnapped before or during the time of the Caguan

demilitarized zone, which lasted 42 months. We do not

understand why FARC should ask for a demilitarized

zone to release the kidnapped when it had that option

for so long and did not free them. The country was

without law and order for many years, and with no

security, which allowed its almost complete takeover

by guerrillas and paramilitaries. Citizens do not want

terrorists; they plead for the exclusive presence of the

State in all regions. We are open to a humanitarian

agreement, but we cannot allow demilitarized zones,

which are ultimately concentration camps run by

terrorists, nor can we permit those who are released

from prison to return to crime, since it would be an

affront to the sacrifice of the country’s soldiers and

police.

We have unilaterally freed 177 FARC members,

as well as Rodrigo Granda, a high-ranking member of

that organization, who was freed at the request of the

President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. We have given

our consent for many people and institutions to be

facilitators. The only answer from the terrorists has

been the treacherous murder of 11 assemblymen from

Valle del Cauca, who were held hostage for more than

five years, and the ongoing assassinations of defenders

of democracy, such as those perpetrated last Saturday,

in which the victim was Julio César Marentes and

Alberto Martínez Barbosa, two candidates for mayor in

Villarrica and Río Blanco, Department of Tolima, and

members of a political party from the Government’s

coalition.

The options open for the release of kidnapping

victims including a French female citizen who is

also Colombian, and three American citizens are not

options for the political positioning of terrorism.

Colombia will not permit the recovery of its legitimate

and democratic sovereignty to be frustrated by

restoring national or international space to the

murdering power of terrorism. If terrorists want to be

involved in politics, they have to renounce their bloody

activities and submit to the Constitution.

Recently, the Government gave its permission to

Senator Piedad Córdoba, who is in the opposition to

the Government, to play a role as facilitator of the

humanitarian agreement. We also accepted the help of

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who will meet

shortly with representatives of FARC. President

Chávez has invited some congressmen from the United

States to join him at that meeting, with my

Government’s support and suggestion that the

American delegation be bipartisan so as to preserve a

bipartisan approach in its relations with Colombia. We

celebrate the positive willingness of the Government of

the United States.

We have established certain reservations in order

to defend our democracy’s higher interests, and we

encourage both President Chávez and Senator Piedad

Córdoba in their tasks because we are committed to the

release of those being held hostage. The dismantling of

paramilitarism, the weakening of the guerrillas, the

restoration of effective guarantees for democracy

beyond rhetoric, and the protection of a free press in a

country where 15 journalists were once murdered in a

year this year there has been one case are results

that allow us to look the world in the eye and demand

full support for our democratic security policy.

Today there is no paramilitarism. There are

guerrillas and drug traffickers. The term “paramilitary”

was coined to refer to private criminal organizations

whose objective was to combat guerrillas. Today, the

sole entity that combats guerrillas is the State, which

has recovered the monopoly it should never have lost.

With the backing of the United Nations, we are

striving to assist displaced persons and to restore their

dignity. We have multiplied by a factor of 10 the

budget to protect them. The phenomenon remains, but

has shown a significant reduction.

Today, Colombians feel more confident. The

investment rate has risen from 12 per cent of gross

domestic product to 26 per cent. Deficit and

indebtedness are moving towards a net reduction.

Unemployment, which stood at around 20 per cent, is

now at 11 per cent, and we are struggling to lower it to

7 per cent. We are seeking to reduce poverty, which

stood at close to 40 per cent, to a level no higher than

35 per cent in 2010.

We are advancing towards the goal of achieving

universal access to basic education. We have built an

excellent technical training system. We have gone from

300,000 to 1.5 million families living in poverty that

receive a subsidy for their children’s nutrition and

education. We aim in the next three years to meet the

goal of universal access to health services. We are

working hard to fulfil, during the current four-year

period, the target of providing 5 million microcredits to

an equal number of families with scarce resources, as a

basic strategy to overcome factors of exclusion. We

have gone from 3.7 million to 9 million children who

have benefited from our food programmes; we expect

to reach 12 million in 2010. Our programme

“Together”, undertaken to eliminate extreme poverty,

combines a variety of social tools to cover 1.5 million

families.

We reaffirm our commitment to fighting global

warming. We have gone from 37,000 natural gas

vehicles to nearly 300,000. We have moved forward in

the construction of mass transportation systems in nine

cities to reduce individual transportation. With

indigenous communities, we have advanced in the

construction of a series of villages that compose a

barrier for the complete recovery of the Sierra Nevada

de Santa Marta. Our new forest law prohibits the

destruction of the rainforest and changes in land use.

Colombia has 578,000 square kilometres of tropical

forest, which constitutes a lung of the planet. We will

soon have 80,000 forest-keeper families, who are

remunerated by the State and are committed to

abandoning illicit drug production and to supervising

the recovery of destroyed forests. One national

objective is the production of bio-fuels, for which we

have 44 million hectares of savannah, which will allow

greater development, initially in sugarcane and African

palm, without jeopardizing food security or destroying

a single square millimetre of rainforest.

I thank the United Nations system for all its

support for Colombia, and I would like to highlight

four areas. The United Nations Office on Drugs and

Crime has been the guarantor and supervisor of our

forest-keeper families programme to protect the

rainforest from the destructive threat of drug

trafficking. The International Labour Organization

carries out excellent work in our workers’ protection

programme. We have extended the mandate of the

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to

maintain its presence in Colombia for the remainder of

my Government’s term of office. Furthermore, various

United Nations entities provide valuable support in the

task of assisting displaced people.

We continue working for a society without

exclusion and without class hatred, in permanent

constructive debate; one that looks for options, that

does not stagnate in insurmountable antagonisms, that

is respectful of the Democratic Constitution and guided

by a long-term vision, and that sustains itself on an

inclusive dialogue every day.

I thank the international community for all its

support. I invite everyone to visit Colombia, to talk to

our fellow countrymen and women, and to experience

the collective spirit to fight for the greater happiness of

future generations. Colombia should be known not

through bad news, but rather through a great

relationship with Colombians themselves. I reiterate

the invitation to visit our country.