A public spat in late September between President Juan Manuel Santos and Vice-President Angelino Garzón, over the methodology used to calculate Colombia’s poverty levels, reignited the debate regarding the role of the vice-president. Furthermore, rumours that Garzón may be forming his own political party to run for the presidency in 2014 have raise several eyebrows, especially amongst right-wingers who fear that the main challenger to Santos’s eventual bid for re-election could be his own 2010 running mate. At present it seems doubtful that Garzón will follow the steps of Juan Carlos Varela in Panama, Federico Franco in Paraguay or Julio Cobos in Argentina, but this new regional trend of vice-presidents becoming the most outspoken members of the opposition means that the flip is possible, even if unlikely.
Santos and Garzón eventually resolved their differences in private, the same realm where Santos wants any future disagreement to be discussed. Santos was also clear that the closed-door meeting wasn’t one called by a superior to reprimand his subordinate, but that it was a talk agreed to by two politicians on an equal footing. Garzón, who had said before the meeting that he would not “relinquish the right to think or to express an opinion, because these are life-long principles”, said after the encounter than he and Santos are “now more united than when we won the election”.
However, the problem for Garzón is a historic one, compounded by a constitution that, based on the assumption that vice-presidents regularly became conspirators to usurp the presidency, failed to define his role. Article 115 of the 1991 Constitution defines the executive power as including the president, his/her ministers and the directors of administrative departments. This means that the vice-president’s responsibilities are only those given to him/her on an ad hoc basis by the president. Furthermore, and reinforcing the historic conspiratorial stereotype, the Magna Carta forbids the vice-president from taking on the role of acting president while the head of state is out of the country on an official capacity lest the former decides to seize the job of the latter.
The aforementioned means that when the vice-president has strong political convictions, a support base of his/her own and a long career of outspoken defence of the poor and most marginalized sectors of society like Garzón, he or she is likely to step on some toes if not kept occupied by the president. So, following the public row between Santos and Garzón, Colombia’s political rumour mill went into full swing with numerous members of the ruling alliance denouncing Garzón’s alleged formation of a political party to back his 2014 presidential aspirations.
According to these versions, Garzón is behind a new political movement called Centro Independiente, which has most of its support in the Valle del Cauca, but which is supposedly trying to expand its reach to the national level. The right-wing Partido de la U (PU), on whose ticket Santos and Garzón were elected, was the principal source of criticism, with the head of the party’s bloc in the senate, Roy Barreras, saying that if Garzón has presidential aspirations he needs to address these within the party, otherwise “he would have to quit the party and his post at least one year before the election”. Fears within the PU regarding Garzón’s future threat, however, seem to be well-founded: in the latest Gallup poll, Garzón was the fourth most popular member of government with a score of 61% in positive image and only an 18% rejection rate. Garzón has said that he will defend his positions “like a cornered cat”; Barreras answered that “even though cats have seven lives, they also tend to be unsociable and solitary and end up leaving their home for a new one”. The warning couldn’t be clearer.
- Farc sub seized
On 23 September members of Colombia’s counternarcotics police seized a submarine believed to belong to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc), with the capacity to transport up to 10 tonnes of cocaine in a single trip. The 16m long vessel, which authorities believe was never used, could transport five crew members, had sophisticated GPS equipment on board and could remain underwater for three days, with enough fuel range to reach Central America and Mexico. The US$2m vessel, protected by 30 guerrillas, was seized as part of ‘Operation Republic 20’ and is believed to be the largest ever captured from a narco-trafficking group.
