ELN declares the peace dialogue with Peter’s government “in crisis”

The policy of “total peace” for Colombian President Gustavo Petro is complicated. The National Liberation Army (ELN), the country’s largest guerrilla group since the demobilization of the FARC in 2016, announced on Monday that the negotiating table with the Government is “in crisis”.

“Dialogues cannot be subject to the ups and downs of the president’s public statements,” the subversive group’s central command said strongly, after Petro on Friday publicly questioned the commanders’ ability to command guerrilla and related forces. fighters with the underground.

“Do they command? Do they really rule? ELN today has a different logic. They are trying to adapt, but the other logic is different, the fronts are federal. It has little to do with Father Camilo Torres,” said the leftist president, referring to the priest who joined the guerrillas in the 1960s, adding later, categorically, that “his raison d’être is illegal economies.”

Petro promised during the campaign that he would sign a pact with the guerrillas three months after taking office, but there are already nine of them, and it seems that his patience is running out. One of the biggest concerns of analysts following the peace process is precisely the ELN does not have such a hierarchical chain of command as the FARCand, in fact, the Western Front expressed itself very strongly, recently, about the negotiations with the Government.

The commanders of Central Command and the guerrilla negotiating team in Havana have always denied this, and their tension is palpable whenever the subject is brought up.

“The president’s statements do not respect the ELN, its command, internal unity and each of its war fronts, in addition to continuing the old practice of stigmatizing opponents,” said the guerrilla on Monday, who also cited the practice “categorical demarcation of all links in the drug trafficking chain.”

The guerrillas and the government are talking these days in Havana in the third cycle of the negotiation process, which suffered several blows that affected the confidence of both sides, such as the announcement, in December, of a bilateral ceasefire by Petro, which the guerrillas later denied, and the attack ELN in March in which ten soldiers were killed.