The rise of the favorite presidential candidate Petro in Colombia unsettles the barracks

RIO DE JANEIIRO, BRAZIL – Very popular for their fight against the guerrillas, the military in Colombia barely figured in politics. But the likely rise to power of a former rebel and leftist opponent broke the silence in the barracks.

Gustavo Petro, who fought the state until the early 1990s, is the favorite in the polls to win the presidential elections on May 29, although he would not have enough votes to avoid a ballot.

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If he prevails at the polls, it would be the first time that a former guerrilla has led the armed forces of a country in conflict, historically governed by conservative and liberal elites, and without the past of military coups that crosses the continent.

His promotion unsettles the barracks. From the president to the defense minister, passing through the commander of the army, they lined up against Petro. And although the Constitution prevents them from voting and deliberating, rarely have men-at-arms intervened so openly in a campaign, analysts note.

“There are those who perceive within the military that this war was won on the battlefield, but it is being lost politically. They consider that the political class with which the army has been, which is the one that has always governed, is losing”, explains analyst and retired colonel Carlos Alfonso Velásquez.

The 62-year-old Petro was a member of the M-19, a nationalist guerrilla group that signed peace in 1990, before going into exile for a time in Europe and returning to his country to become a legislator and then mayor of Bogotá (2012-2015).

A sector of the uniformed men perceive it with “certain suspicion and fear,” says retired Colonel José Marulanda, president of the Colombian Association of Retired Officers (Acore). “We feel that he has a very clear resentment against the military and police, who were the ones who killed his M-19 comrades in combat,” he maintains.

The old enemy of the troops could be the commander in chief of 228,000 military and 172,000 police. Together, they make up the largest armed forces on the continent after those of Brazil. The United States has allocated millions of resources in its training and equipment against drug trafficking and rebel groups.

CROSSFIRE

The commander of the army, General Eduardo Zapateiro, brought the controversy with Petro to its most intense point with a series of tweets after his denunciations of alleged alliances between generals and drug traffickers at the cost of the death of soldiers.

Zapateiro accused him of “politicking” and taking electoral advantage of the death of soldiers. He also alluded to a 2005 video in which Petro was seen receiving wads of bills, money that the court later ruled had a lawful origin. “I have not seen any general on television receiving ill-gotten money. Colombians have seen you receive money in a garbage bag,” Zapateiro snapped.

As a result of his comments, the officer faces a preliminary investigation for intervening in politics, while President Iván Duque came out in support of him as well as Defense Minister Diego Molano, who treated Petro as a “liar”.

The military, which has waged a conflict for more than six decades, participated in the negotiations that led, in 2017, to the disarmament of the FARC. A retired general was part of the talks, but ended up criticizing the peace agreement for his alleged concessions to the rebels.

Within his proposals, Petro has proposed a reduction in the military budget (currently 3.4% of GDP), apply a merit-based promotion policy and separate the police from the Ministry of Defense. “They have popularized a dangerous idea that the armed forces are from the right and the left is their enemy. Such undemocratic outrage has been based on the very existence of the insurgent war,” Petro wrote in an opinion piece.

Although the military enjoys popular support, scandals have undermined its reputation, including the alliances with bloodthirsty paramilitaries and the execution of 6,402 civilians that the troops presented as guerrillas killed in combat to inflate their results.

“That prestige of the army, cultivated in the conflict, has received a strong shake. And the military see in Petro the person who takes criticism” of the troops, points out Velásquez.

But the threat of a coup seems distant. “We would see some type of disagreement within the ranks that would manifest itself with the request to drop the ranks. That is to say, ‘I do not agree with this and I am withdrawing’, affirms the head of Acore.

A sector of the reserves has already aligned with Petro, according to Alfonso Manzur, head of the organization Veterans for Colombia. “There is nonconformity in the high command because they feel that the promotion system is corrupted by internal mafias,” he explains.