Development: On 7 August Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos gave a televised address to mark the end of the first year of his current four-year presidential term, in which he stated that while securing a peace deal with the country’s guerrillas remains the top priority for his government, “there are other issues” on which his administration is also looking to focus.
Significance: President Santos won re-election in last year’s presidential elections by promising to carry out to conclusion the current peace negotiations that his government has been advancing with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) guerrillas since 2012. But the peace process has recently been through a series of crises that have lost it public support. With economic growth on the slide this year as a result of lower international oil prices, Santos’s popularity has suffered and his administration is facing growing criticism for almost exclusively focusing on the peace negotiations at the expense of other issues. Santos sought to combat these criticisms in yesterday’s address by highlighting some of his government’s other priorities, particularly on the economic front.
- The latest public opinion poll, published by Ipsos Napoleón Franco on 29 July, found that Santos’s approval rating had fallen from 71% in July 2014 to 47% in July 2015. This drop was attributed to the vagaries of the peace negotiations as well as a lower level of domestic economic activity. The poll found that a major concern for respondents was the performance of the domestic economy with unemployment cited as the chief public concern (40%), followed by public insecurity (33%), inflation (19%) and violence (18%).
- Yesterday’s address appeared designed to show that addressing these concerns is on Santos’s agenda. He made no apologies about maintaining peace as his main priority but acknowledged that the public had other concerns that his government would also seek to tackle. “The search for peace is of course very important, but it is not the only thing that we dedicate our efforts to”, Santos said.
- In particular Santos focused on concerns relating to public security and the economy. As regards the former, Santos said that as the peace process moves along, he has ordered the security forces to prioritise the fight against organised and street crime. On the economy, Santos pointed out that the less favourable international economic scenario had negatively affected the Colombian economy. But he said that his government had been and would continue to adopt “corrective measures” to counter act this.
Looking Ahead: Santos also sought to put a positive spin on the domestic economic difficulties. He said that the peso’s devaluation against the US dollar “produces more winners than losers... by giving us the opportunity to diversify our exports and substitute our imports, generating more jobs”.
End of preview - This article contains approximately 456 words.
Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article
Not a Subscriber?
Choose from one of the following options
