Forgetting Colombia in Debate Over Free Trade Pact

Anyone trying to figure out who has Colombia's best interest at heart in regard to the floundering U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement was at risk of being spun silly last week by developments in Washington and reactions in Colombia.

First, President Bush made the decision to send the trade deal to Congress knowing full well that the House leadership wasn't on board. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had already warned Bush that the measure would fail if pushed too rapidly and without accompanying legislation to address growing economic anxieties in this country. This demonstrated, Democrats claimed, that Bush was less interested in passing the pact than in scoring points in an election year.

After the bill arrived on Capitol Hill, Pelosi took the unprecedented step of postponing the vote indefinitely despite a law that requires the House to decide within 60 legislative days after delivery. This proved, Republicans argued, that Pelosi was more interested in catering to powerful U.S. labor interests that oppose the pact than in supporting Washington's closest ally in Latin America.

Both sides, of course, were putting politics ahead of their concerns for Colombia. That is expected behavior among politicians in an election year. What is strange, however, is to hear those who should be putting Colombia first -- i.e., Colombians -- applauding the impasse and using the occasion to bash free trade.

Among them was Carlos Gaviria, leader of the Democratic Pole Party, who in an interview in El Espectador celebrated Pelosi's move, insisting that the free trade agreement would be "harmful" to Colombia's economy and its sovereignty, as well as its poor. Gaviria, who won 22 percent of the vote in the 2006 presidential election, sent a letter to Pelosi last month stating that the agreement would mean the ruin of Colombia's agricultural sector.

Then there was Daniel Samper, El Tiempo's respected columnist and the brother of former President Ernesto Samper, who argued that the agreement would be "suicidal," especially in the context of high food prices. Samper claimed that the trade agreement would kill local industries and thus allow multinationals to face no competition in Colombia and impose whatever prices they wished. Because of free trade, Samper asserted, food would become "a privilege for the rich."