Colombia's presidential transition

Still in charge
Álvaro Uribe tries to undermine his successor’s tentative reconciliation with Venezuela’s government

DURING Colombia’s presidential campaign, Álvaro Uribe supported Juan Manuel Santos, his former defence minister, as vocally as the election laws permitted. In return Mr Santos, who ran promising to continue Mr Uribe’s security policies, was appropriately grateful, making sure to credit the incumbent for his victory and promising to retain him as a “permanent adviser”. Yet Mr Uribe did not leave office willingly—his bid for a third term was found unconstitutional—and he started backing Mr Santos only after his preferred candidate lost in a primary. The cracks in this alliance of convenience are now starting to show. With Mr Santos’s inauguration just two weeks away, Mr Uribe seems to be trying to dictate his successor’s foreign policy, raising concerns that he may continue to meddle in national politics after leaving office.

Few issues are more sensitive for Mr Uribe than the alleged sheltering of Colombia’s FARC and ELN guerrillas by its neighbours. Thanks to the president’s relentless military assault, many fighters from both groups have fled across the borders. In 2008 Mr Uribe had Mr Santos raid a FARC camp in Ecuador, and complained that FARC arsenals included Swedish-made weapons that were originally sold to the Venezuelan government.

Mr Uribe has been careful about making such allegations public. Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s leftist president, whose relations with Mr Uribe have been stormy, reacted to the previous Colombian claims (and to an agreement updating arrangements under which American forces have access to Colombian bases) by imposing sanctions on bilateral trade and ordering troops to the border.
Yet on July 15th Mr Uribe’s defence minister, Gabriel Silva, revealed new evidence to the press. He played videos of guerrillas, including a top FARC member known as Iván Márquez, recorded at a camp whose GPS co-ordinates are 23km inside Venezuela. He also said that Rodrigo Granda, the FARC’s de facto foreign minister, and Carlos Marín Guarín, an ELN leader, had been seen in Venezuela. In response, Mr Chávez recalled his ambassador and cancelled his plan to attend Mr Santos’s inauguration. As The Economist went to press, Colombia was set to replay the videos, backed up by the testimonies of 12 demobilised FARC members, at a special meeting of the Organisation of American States.

Mr Uribe could have left all this to Mr Santos. But it seems he feared that his successor, who by comparison is more flexible and calculating, was being too friendly to Mr Chávez. Mr Santos is hardly a dove, but he argues that the only way to get Venezuela’s help against the FARC is to normalise relations. As a result, he had taken a few baby steps towards reconciliation, inviting Mr Chávez to his inauguration and choosing María Ángela Holguín, a former ambassador to Venezuela, as his foreign minister. Mr Chávez, for his part, said he “had a lot of faith” that Venezuela’s “relations with Colombia…would begin to change.”

That was too much for Mr Uribe. The selection of Ms Holguín irritated him, since she had clashed with him over several appointments she saw as repaying political favours. He is also thought to be displeased with Mr Santos’s choice of Juan Camilo Restrepo, a critic of many of his own policies, as agriculture minister, and with his successor’s plans to undo his merging of several ministries.

Mr Uribe first responded to Mr Santos’s gestures of engagement by sneering at what he called “cosmetic”, “sappy”, and “hypocritical” diplomacy, without naming names. He then released the tapes. And in case there was any doubt about the president’s motivation, Mr Silva explained that Mr Uribe feared that concerns over harbouring guerrillas “could be forgotten in this climate of rapprochement with Venezuela’s government.”

Mr Chávez has not fully swallowed Mr Uribe’s bait: he was careful not to blame Mr Santos for Colombia’s accusations, instead attributing them to a “power struggle between Uribe…and the new group of Santos.” He reiterated his denial that the FARC are active in his country. That flies in the face of overwhelming evidence.

But the timing of Colombia’s latest iteration of its claims blunted their effectiveness. Mr Santos has played down the incident. During a private meeting with Mr Uribe he is reported to have said: “You govern until August 7th, Mr President.” But not a day longer, was the implication.