Yankee Neocolonialism Returns to Colombia

Yankee Neocolonialism Returns to Colombia

 

Two congressional Democrats meddle in the affairs of a U.S. ally.

 

By Mary Anastasia O'Grady in the Wall Street Journal

There are two other certainties in life besides death and taxes. One is that Latin America's hard left despises the U.S. The other is that when these foes of the "imperialist north" are not beavering away at their revolutionary cause, they seek aid and comfort in Washington—where they are often successful.

Take the case of Bogotá Mayor Gustavo Petro.

A former member of the terrorist group M-19 and a good friend of the late Hugo Chávez, Mr. Petro won the 2011 mayoral election with a mere 32% of the vote. His two years in office have shown him to be a dreadful administrator with little respect for the rule of law.

One example: a unilateral decision in 2012, against the wishes of the city council, to end public bidding for garbage collection by private companies. Ever the socialist visionary, he arbitrarily assigned the job to the public water company. It was entirely unprepared for the task. What followed was a sanitation crisis of monumental proportions for the capital's seven million inhabitants.

Under powers granted to the nation's inspector general in Colombia's 1991 Constitution—and broadened in the 2002 disciplinary code—public officials who are negligent in their duties are to be removed. The garbage fiasco seemed to qualify, and Inspector General Alejandro Ordóñez initiated an investigation. On Dec. 9 he issued a ruling to dismiss the mayor from office for what he termed "seriously grave" offenses. An additional penalty, required under the law for such a finding, is expulsion from politics for between 10 and 20 years. Mr. Ordóñez settled on 15.

Mr. Petro is entitled to an appeal. In the meantime he claims that his human rights have been violated and that the decision was political. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have used the ruling to try to gain leverage in their peace talks with the government. They charge that the Petro expulsion shows that guerrillas who come in from the cold in a peace agreement (as the M-19 did in the late 1980s) can easily be tossed out of elected office.

Both claims ignore the facts. The M-19 played a leading role in drafting the 1991 constitution, which establishes the office of the inspector general and assigns it the task of overseeing public administrators and elected officials. As a senator in the Colombian congress in 2008, Mr. Petro voted to confirm Mr. Ordóñez's nomination to inspector general.

According to the Colombian press, in his first term the hard-nosed Mr. Ordóñez removed hundreds of mayors and scores of governors for failure to live up to their obligations to the public. His predecessor also removed hundreds of mayors. But Mr. Ordóñez was considered so good at his job that he was the first inspector general to be nominated and confirmed for a second term.

The record shows he is an equal-opportunity task master who takes to heart his mission to defend the public interest. In November he removed the superintendent of banks for his handling of the collapse of a Colombian financial institution and barred him from the public sphere for 12 years. Center-right President Juan Manuel Santos and many Colombians did not agree with the decision. But the nation, including the president, stood back in order to respect the independence of the inspector general.

Is Mr. Petro special? Some geniuses in Washington think so. Two days after the Petro ruling, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez, (D., N.J.) used a confirmation hearing for President Obama's nominee for U.S. ambassador to Colombia to lend credence to the notion that "the tenets of due process" were somehow not "respected" in Mr. Petro's case and that the decision "might be politically motivated." When the nominee Kevin Whitaker told him that Mr. Petro is allowed to appeal, an indignant Mr. Menendez huffed that things work differently in the U.S.

Not to be outdone, Mr. Whitaker intimated that the inspector general's finding casts doubt on the Colombian government's good faith in the peace process with the FARC.

I defy any American who cares about the U.S. image abroad to read that transcript—dripping with condescension toward a sovereign nation and an ally and rife with ignorance about Colombian law—and not cringe. Ugly doesn't begin to describe it.

Last week Citizen Petro flew to Washington. Rep. Jim McGovern (D., Mass.), who seems to be on the speed-dial of many a Colombian socialist, emerged from a meeting with the inept Mr. Petro wringing his hands about whether "ex-combatants" enjoy inclusion in Colombia. Somebody ought to tell the congressman about Antonio Navarro Wolf, a former M-19 guerrilla who held full terms as the mayor of Pasto, a Colombian senator and the governor of Nariño. His record is one of competence. Mr. Petro's is not.

During the Cold War many Democrats argued that U.S. efforts to confront Soviet expansionism in Central and South America amounted to neocolonialism and unjustified meddling in foreign lands. So how can the U.S. have any business butting into the domestic affairs of the pluralistic republic of Colombia today?