In an interview with EL TIEMPO, Senator María Fernanda Cabal, from the Democratic Center and one of the people who most questions the government of President Gustavo Petro, spoke about how she considers the appointment of her husband, José Félix Lafaurie, as a member of the negotiating team with the ELN guerrillas.
(President Petro invites the leader of Fedegán to be a negotiator with the ELN).
According to the congresswoman, her husband, president of the cattle union, should not be a negotiator, but should be an observer.
He also says that he is not very optimistic about the negotiations and made known his reservations on this issue.
How do you see the dialogues with the ELN?
I personally am not optimistic about negotiations with the Elenos. It’s my stance. I have been openly critical of this group and it seems to me that if we are to analyze, they are the worst and the ones that have done the most damage to the country. They have a higher level of ideological contamination than all other guerrilla groups and a very high capacity to act as a terrorist. They have no limits. They are the creators of the agrarian myth, they have very prepared people in their organization, but just as they are prepared, in the formation of their personality they have no moral or ethical limits, but they believe they do.
And how do you see your husband’s decision to want to be part of the negotiating team with that guerrilla?
I believe that José Félix’s decision regarding the purchase of land by the Government is a decision as a union leader that should be supported by his own union. But since I believe that to be a negotiator he has to have certain skills, I suggest that he should be an observer.
Why?
Because he comes from a union terribly beaten for decades by the guerrillas, demonized, demonized. A perverse narrative has been created, which is not true, like me, as they did at the time with Álvaro Gómez, with the Conservative Party. I really respect his decision, but I don’t share it.
And have you already talked to him about this issue?
He told me yesterday. He was very doubtful, in fact, I think he was surprised because they call him and they inform him that the President wants to propose him to the negotiating team. He told me: ‘I really don’t know what to say because I don’t have any problem as a union leader, I speak to my union’, he already did it last time with the purchase of land, when they also misunderstood him. This is more complex because it is a criminal group that has never wanted to sit down and see the faces of its victims, it has never wanted to sit down and acknowledge responsibility for events in the past, terrible, like what happened in San Vicente de Chucurí, where you go and find 300 crippled on behalf of the elenos. Where they have never told us their link with the Marxist line of the Catholic Church. This is a challenge.
So you don’t approve?
I am never going to appease with a group that has carried out a criminal action that is not justified under any ideological or revolutionary cover. So one cannot jump like cats because politics is dynamic, I am not. my distance.
And what do you recommend to your husband?
He doesn’t know the elenos, I only half know them, there are people who know them much better, so I will recommend him to be an approximation simply with the intention of knowing how this country is going to move, but not to be a validator again of impunity as was the process of Havana.
Gustavo Petro and José Félix Lafaurie.
That is, are you afraid that they will take you to validate what is agreed?
Of course, it is that politically there are those who read and say this is a master move by Petro, it is to involve them and say that you too, as you have been responsible, also participate here, that can be a reading. Others will say that it is better to be inside than outside because it is ultimately the destiny of a country. In any case, the decision he made is bold and I reiterate that I think he (Lafaurie) should consider being an observer, not having a superior involvement because for that you need some skills, and he will have some, but I don’t know how far with who I consider to be the most dangerous group in the political history of Colombia.
But are you clear about what role Lafaurie will play in the negotiating team?
Well, I know that he accepted the invitation, but he already has to determine his level of involvement. Furthermore, if Petro dedicates himself to bringing in people who have been guerrillas, looking for countries that have been openly violating human rights, like Cuba, and he wants Venezuela to be a guarantor, then that will cost him a lot of credibility in the process. He needs validators that generate some kind of reliability despite the controversy.
And the president of Fedegán could be that validator?
Of course, because Petro is boldly telling you if you, who have been the sector that has confronted us the most, because here in history they returned to the victimizing ranchers, when they were victims for decades. So seeing the ranchers, adversaries, and now including them at a table is audacious, it is valid within a political negotiation, but every decision has a cost and what I don’t want is for José Félix’s decisions to generate a cost in credibility with the voters and in my political future, because I am honestly not optimistic about these dialogues.
And, politically, how much can the decision of the president of Fedegán affect her?
I believe that not everything affects one for better or for worse. Always in a country so polarized and so hypersensitive of course it affects me. For this reason, it is so important for me to convey to the public that none of this that is going to happen is going to change my positions. Here, the ELN is the one that has to show repentance, ask for forgiveness and we cannot continue giving away impunity in this country.
JORGE MELENDEZ
Politics deputy editor
