BOGOTA (Reuters) – Leading Colombian presidential candidate Gustavo Petro is roundly essential of the U.S.-led war on medicine and has questioned the extradition of a drug kingpin, views that will herald a shakeup of how the Andean nation battles the narcotics business.
Petro factors out that regardless of billions of {dollars} in safety spending and many years of U.S. strain to scale back drug manufacturing, Colombia stays a prime world provider of cocaine and the location of bloody drug violence.
A left-wing senator who was as soon as the mayor of Bogota, Petro has about 40% help forward of the May 29 election. He is anticipated to face a runoff vote.
Petro decried the extradition this month of the accused chief of the Clan del Golfo cartel, Dairo Antonio Usuga. He additionally extra broadly questions the effectiveness of extradition, a authorized software Washington considers a strong deterrent to crime.
“Extradition: it deserves a dialogue – a assessment of the figures – to see if what’s been achieved for 40 years has labored or not; if 1,000,000 lifeless Latin Americans – the bulk Colombians and Mexicans – has been price it,” the candidate informed Semana journal this month.
Petro, a former member of the M-19 guerrilla group, has stated no accused criminals needs to be extradited till they confess to their victims. He alleges that Colombia’s present authorities rushed the departure of Usuga, broadly often known as Otoniel, to keep away from embarrassing revelations forward of the election.
“Alias Otoniel needed to say which generals within the police, within the navy, which senators, which representatives, which governors, which ministers, which presidents had been allied with him,” Petro informed a rally within the agricultural metropolis of Fusagasuga.
Before his extradition, Otoniel’s attorneys argued he needs to be allowed to testify to a transitional justice tribunal and reveal hyperlinks between the navy and armed teams.
President Ivan Duque has promised Otoniel will likely be returned to Colombia to face additional fees after serving time within the United States. The Interior Ministry didn’t reply to a request for touch upon Petro’s allegations.
Current insurance policies have didn’t decrease Colombia’s cocaine output. Between 2010 and 2020, the latest 12 months for which figures can be found, potential manufacturing greater than tripled to 1,010 metric tonnes, U.S. authorities knowledge reveals.
GREEN DRUG POLICY
If his third presidential bid is profitable, Petro has stated his precedence for the bilateral relationship will likely be preventing local weather change and that his administration will body drug coverage across the atmosphere.
He opposes restarting aerial spraying of coca, the plant used to make cocaine, with the herbicide glyphosate and needs to substitute coca crops with authorized marijuana.
Petro will possible face right-wing candidate Federico Gutierrez in a second spherical, which can happen if no candidate will get greater than 50% of the vote on May 29.
Gutierrez, who has round 25% help, would current fewer challenges to the established order. He doesn’t oppose glyphosate spraying and backed Otoniel’s extradition.
He will coordinate with Washington to create a victims fee if he wins, Gutierrez informed Colombian media in May, though he has additionally urged unspecified modifications to the bilateral relationship.
Petro would possibly discover frequent floor with the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden on crop substitution in addition to implementation of the nation’s 2016 peace cope with the FARC rebels, Oliver Kaplan, affiliate professor on the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies stated.
In an indication Petro could also be moderating a few of his extra strident insurance policies because the election attracts nearer, the candidate has softened language round proposals to renegotiate free commerce agreements, together with a 2012 cope with the United States, in an effort to enhance home agriculture.
Petro has additionally proposed the gradual elimination of tariffs on fertilizers, whereas levying them on meals imports.
Senator Roy Barreras, a Petro ally, informed a Colombian-American Chamber of Commerce occasion in April Petro is in search of “not a renegotiation, however a rethink” of free commerce agreements.
‘RADICAL TURN’
The Justice Department would take a dim view of a ban on extradition, Kaplan stated, although it stays to be seen how Petro’s objections could also be translated into coverage.
The prospect of probably prolonged sentences removed from dwelling has lengthy been one of many most important weapons within the bilateral arsenal for preventing drug trafficking.
Washington sees extradition as a strategy to assure prosecution of criminals who would possibly escape justice in their very own international locations by way of corruption. Colombian traffickers have traditionally hated extradition and mounted an out-and-out assault in protest of it within the late Eighties.
“A radical flip” within the method to those points may restrict U.S. funding for the anti-drug struggle and have an effect on the overall sense of safety in Colombia, stated Carolina Urrego, political science professor at Los Andes University.
The U.S. is already negotiating thorny diplomacy with as soon as dependable companions Mexico and Brazil.
Anti-narcotics efforts have seen a shake up in Mexico, the place President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador final 12 months closed an elite unit working hand-in-hand with the U.S.
The Justice Department declined to remark about Petro’s extradition proposals and whether or not they would put in danger bilateral cooperation. The State Department didn’t reply.
U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Philip Goldberg stated Washington would work with whoever gained the election.
“We intend to take care of a strategic relationship with Colombia, it is extremely necessary for each international locations, for the economies of each international locations, for the safety of each international locations,” Goldberg just lately informed journalists. He declined to debate particular proposals.
(Reporting by Carlos Vargas, extra reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb and Nelson Bocanegra; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb and Oliver Griffin; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)
