Fred Fuentes
In a surprise move, the National Liberation Army (ELN) has decided it will participate in Colombia’s elections for the first time. The four-decade-old ELN is the second largest Colombian guerilla group, with around 7000 fighters.
In an interview published on rebelion.org on January 21, the ELN’s international relations coordinator Milton Hernadez announced that the ELN would be participating in a coalition with three other left forces — the Social and Political Front (FSP), which groups parties from Maoist, Trotskyist and other communist traditions with union and community activists), the Democratic Pole (PD) and Democratic Alternative (AD), a leftist force with presence already in parliament.
The coalition will propose one candidate for the 2006 presidential elections on a five-point platform of unity: No to Plan Colombia; No to the Free Trade of Americas Agreement; Yes to negotiations between the government and the insurgency; No to the fiscal reform and privatisation project of the current Colombian state; and No to the re-election of Uribe. It is not clear who the candidate will be yet, nor how exactly the ELN will participate.
According to Hernadez, the decision was made because “a historic opportunity exists in Colombia to have for the first time a government that is democractic in character, a government of political transition, between the state and the guerrillas, which does not correspond to the neoliberal model nor with the fascist model of the State Department, and which is possible on the basis of a grand unity of will of the patriotic and left sectors.”
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest guerilla group has reject any idea of participation in the elections.
From Green Left Weekly, January 26, 2005.
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