14.08.2002 (By Roberto Gutiérrez, ANNCOL Stockholm) Shortly before Colombia’s new president, right-wing extremist Álvaro Uribe Vélez took office last Monday, with the occurrence of the first International Meeting of exiled members of the Colombian Communist Party (CCP) and the Patriotic Union (UP) in Stockholm, Sweden, ANNCOL had the opportunity to interview Jaime Caicedo, a university professor and General Secretary of the CCP.

After revealing with gravity and objectivity, the just struggle of the Colombian people against a State that practices terror in order to maintain power before a numerous public gathering in the Swedish capital counting on the presence of parliamentarians, parties, and political movements of the Nordic area, Jaime Caicedo spoke to ANNCOL:

ANNCOL: In a scale of one to five, how do you rate Andres Pastrana’s term of office as it comes to a close?

CAICEDO: I rate it at 1.0. He must be given recognition for the peace process but at the same time understanding his fatal contribution in giving it death. Moreover, I believe that what characterized Pastrana was his incapacity and his inclination to annul his rare successes.

ANNCOL: In one of the public interventions in the city of Estocolmo, you mentioned the amorphous character of the elected candidate, Alvaro Uribe Velez, what do you mean by this?

CAICEDO: Uribe is an organic representative of the new Colombian bourgeoisie. An example of the upper middle strata, enriched by narcotrafficking, determined to make the program of great transnational capital functional. He is not the spokesperson of the classical sector: industrial, commercial, exporters, financiers, landowners. He represents a distinct faction, in the process of gaining hegemony in the class, which recognizes the worst of the old Colombian right, its violent and authoritarian sentiment, together with the neoconservative vision of imperialist globalization. For Washington, he is the perfect man: sufficiently convinced of their security project, war and repression; and made sufficiently vulnerable by his past in relation to drugs and paramilitarism.

ANNCOL: The European Union added the FARC to their list of terrorist organizations, what is your opinion on this matter?

CAICEDO: It is an error of the leaders of the European Union. They operate, hastily, under the pressure of the United States. Europe should preserve its independence of judgment to see with its own eyes the complex problems of Latin America. It should not limit itself in order to fulfill a positive role in conflicts so grave as the Colombian. The European presence in the dialogue processes closed by Pastrana’s government was very important. In fact, the European Union would be able to revive the Group of 10 Countries Friends of the Peace Process in Colombia [Editor’s note: Sweden, Italy, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela and Cuba] with a gesture directed to favor a closeness between the parties of Colombia.

(Translated by Nathalie Alsop)