Santos' approval rating soars to 89%

[naaman fletcher]

The approval rating of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos rose to 89% just days before the end of his first 100 days in office, newscast CM& reported on Friday.

According to the survey, 8% of the Colombia's disapprove of the work of their president and 3% does not know or has no opinion.

Santos receives the approval of 86% of Colombians for how he manages the fight against leftist guerrillas, drug gangs and terrorism, 81% for his efforts to re-establish ties with neighboring country Venezuela, and 76% for his choice of ministers.

83% against 11% of the interviewees has the impression that Colombia is on the right way.

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/12774-santos-approval-rating-soars-to-89.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. An 89% approval rating means that sufficient leftists have been murdered (many thousands)

and poor peasant farmers displaced (5 MILLION) to terrorize and decimate the leftist opposition. That is the story of Colombia and its $7 BILLION in U.S. military funding over the last decade or so. MASS MURDER, terror, brutality, vast domestic spying, hit lists and massive theft and corruption by the fascist oligarchs on behalf of themselves and Occidental Petroleum, Exxon Mobil, Chiquita International, Drummond Coal and other multinational corporations and war profiteers, and the bigger drug lords. Thousands of union leaders, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, journalists, political opponents and others have been killed, by the Colombian military and its death squads, producing terrorized silence in those who are remain. About a quarter of a million poor peasants have fled into neighboring Venezuela, from the Colombia military. Another quarter million have fled across the border into Ecuador.

These are NOT conditions in which public opinion can be accurately gaged.

And in addition to the terrorized majority, I would guess that there is some proportion of Colombians suffering "Stockholm Syndrome"--that is, they feel relieved that the terrorists who run Colombia in connivance with the Pentagon seem to be easing up, temporarily, and are slapping some democracy cosmetics on this U.S. client state.

Until all the perps are in jail, and Colombian politics is no longer conducted by death threats, no poll or vote in Colombia can be trusted. And this ridiculous 89% approval rating for Santos (who was Defense Minister during many Colombian military murders of civilians) simply confirms that assessment.

[social_critic]

2. Nevertheless, the main is popular, and the FARC are being defeated

The polls are probably reliable. People of all classes like two things: 1) money in their wallets and 2) security

The Colombian economy has been growing very fast, unemployment is going down, wages are going up, inflation is under control, and crime is going down. Evidently the government has serious human rights problems - but the everyday man will vote with his wallet first, and the safety and security of his family is second. This is true across the world. And this is the reason why leftists such as Chavez are losing popularity, the economy is not doing well, and crime is increasing. It's amazing to observe just how brain addled they are, if they focused on these two basic issues, Chavez and his trained seals would do much better.

[Peace Patriot]

3. One more dead body to add to the murders you don't see...

Leader of Displaced People Killed in Colombia

Caracas,
Sunday
November 7,2010

Leader of Displaced People Killed in Colombia


BOGOTA – The president of an association of displaced people in northeastern Colombia was murdered inside her house in the city of Bucaramanga, the Alternative Democratic Pole, or PDA, party’s committee in Santander province said Sunday. (MORE)

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=376355&CategoryId=12393

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4605678

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There are FIVE MILLION displaced poor people in Colombia--the second worst human displacement crisis in the world. Their lands have been stolen by the same people who order up death squads to murder community activists like this one--Elizabeth Silva Aguilar, an advocate of the displaced--as well as other human rights workers, trade unionists, teachers, journalists, political dissenters and others who advocate social justice--thousands of whom have been killed. The Colombian government and military have one of the worst human rights records in the world. How can you say that opinion polls or votes are legitimate in these circumstances? Because you are BLIND TO THESE deaths, that is how. If you don't see them, if you don't acknowledge their deaths and the fear that survivors have to live with, that they, too, may be killed if they raise their head in any kind of social justice cause or even simple fairness in government, then of course you think that an 89% approval poll for Colombia's fascist president is "probably reliable." Like many with rightwing views, you deliberately DON'T SEE the people who are trampled by the policies that you support and how this tears at fabric of democracy.

Your cynical view of what people want, when they vote, also gives you away. Are you perhaps projecting when you say that "the everyday man will vote with his wallet first"? That was NOT true for instance in the 2008 presidential election here, when all polls indicated that most voters were voting for Obama to end the Iraq War. We were in a Bushwhack-induced financial collapse at the time. Yet that is NOT what people were primarily concerned about. Perhaps YOU "voted your wallet," if you voted in that election. Most others did not.

Your assertions about unemployment, wages and crime in Colombia are unsourced. Colombia is notorious for having one of the worst rich/poor discrepancies in Latin America.

-----

Colombia is the third most unequal county, in terms of income inequality, in the Americas after Bolivia and Haiti, while Latin America is the most unequal region in the world.

Colombia is a middle income country where a large proportion of the population live in poverty. The fact that between 45 and 64 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line is a reflection of the high levels of inequality that persist in the country.

(SNIP)

Land concentration in Colombia is biased towards large landowners at the expense of rural small-scale farmers: 0.4 per cent of landowners own 61 per cent of rural land.

Concentration of land ownership has increased over recent years, fuelled by the forced displacement of rural communities: it is estimated that around 6 million hectares of land have been abandoned by people fleeing the conflict. Unequal landownership deprives rural farmers of a livelihood and so perpetuates income inequality. Additionally, by reducing the land available for small-scale farmers to produce food for subsistence, unequal landownership contributes to food insecurity, with resulting health problems including malnutrition, anaemia, calcium deficiencies, and deficiencies in calorie intake.

Poverty involves the systematic violation of economic, social and cultural rights that affect almost every sphere of life, and which are frequently inter-dependent. Very few poor people work in the formal sector, which would allow them access to health care or pension benefits. Thus the income poverty from which they suffer is further aggravated by insecurity and by the inadequacy of the social services to which they have access.

In addition, poor quality and access to education disproportionately affect children from poor families, making it even harder for them to ever break the cycle of poverty.

http://www.abcolombia.org.uk/mainpage.asp?mainid=76
(my emphases)
--

Colombia's Gini coefficient (a measurement of inequality in wealth distribution) was 0.51 in 2000 and 0.56 in 2006, making it the second-most unequal country in Latin America in terms of wealth distribution, after Brazil. By 2009, Colombia had reached a Gini coefficient of 0.587, which was the highest (inequality) in Latin America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_Colombia
(my emphasis)

--

Chavez and "his trained seals" have actually done something about poverty--cutting poverty iN HALF and extreme poverty by over 70% in Venezuela, according to the Millennium Project and other analysts. Colombia's fascists have done nothing but make Colombia's dire poverty worse, with vast displacements of peasant farmers and Colombian military and rightwing death squad murders of advocates of the poor.

[Peace Patriot]

4. Union leader speaks of on-going murders, displacements and lack of democracy in Colombia

Colombian unionist calls for solidarity
Saturday, November 6, 2010
By Jim McIlroy & Kiraz Janicke

Touring Colombian unionist Parmenio Poveda Salazar, an official with the National Unitarian Federation of Agrarian Unions (Fensuagro), has called for increased international solidarity with unionists and human rights activists in Colombia.

Parmenio said: "Many leaders of Colombian unions have been assassinated, and others have been forced into exile" by the policies of former president Alvaro Uribe. These same policies are continuing under new president Manuel Santos with at least 22 unionists and social justice activists being killed in the first 75 days of Santos’ presidency. "Internal displacement has worsened in the past year, with some 4,700,000 persons currently displaced in Colombia.

"People have been forced to flee by the military and the right-wing paramilitaries, but meanwhile the big landholdings have grown as farmers are pushed off their land."

Despite the ongoing human rights violations the US continues to back successive Colombian governments because they are subordinate to US policies in Latin America he explained.

"The government claims to be democratic, but it's a total lie. Around 3500 leaders of the trade unions have been murdered since the late 1980s and 40 were assassinated last year.”

"It is very difficult ... for the democratic movement in Colombia to win power by elections, because of the harsh repression," Parmenio said.

(MORE)

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/45987
(my emphases)
Judi Lynn post here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x44145

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It's quite revealing of the moral bankruptcy of the rightwing, whether here or in Latin America, that rampant murder and massive poverty are ignored amidst "Alice in Wonderland-ish" assertions, about a place like Colombia, that "crime is down" or "wages are going up." Whether it's the 100,000 murdered innocents in Iraq, to steal their oil, or the thousands of targeted leftists murdered in Colombia, to silence the leftist opposition, or the poverty and suffering in Iraq, in Colombia and in the U.S., they just don't SEE it and they feel no obligation to address it, when these FACTS are brought to their attention. They appear to identify with the sociopaths--the multinational corporate executives and war profiteers--who rule these places and whose only value is their own ungodly profit. They don't see the suffering. They don't feel any responsibility for it--as citizens of their own country or as human beings. Their primitive sense of community appears to be limited to the Have's. The Have's lie through their teeth to hang onto their riches. And rightwingers trumpet those lies.