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.