COLOMBIA: MP flees Uribe's death squads

BY ROBERTO JORQUERA

According to independent left-wing Colombian MP Gustavo Montealegre Almario, Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe Velez, is the leader of the country's right-wing paramilitary death squads groups.

Montealegre told Green Left Weekly that threats from right-wing paramilitary groups had forced him into exile. He is apply for political asylum in Australia.

"The current government of Alvaro Uribe Velez and the new congress are illegitimate as they have been elected by only 30% of those eligible to vote", said Montealegre. "The potential of abstentions in previous elections rises to 70% of suffrages, which means that the new government was not elected by the majority of Colombians, but by a small, not representative minority and that is without taking into account the electoral fraud".

According to Montealegre, Uribe intends to transform vast numbers of civilians into informants for the military and the paramilitary groups by offering large amounts of money in US dollars.

On the continuing civil war between the government and leftist guerrillas, Montealegre said "there will not be winners or losers, but a butchery and bloodshed, yet without the intervention of the US military, the victory of the insurgency would be an irreversible fact".

From Green Left Weekly, October 2, 2002.

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From GLW issue 511