Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Colombia Ambassador Talk

I watched a talk by Colombia Ambassador Francisco Santos Calderón, organized by Global Atlanta. Yes, that Santos family--he was Vice President under Alvaro Uribe and related to past presidents. You can, then, guess what kinds of things he would emphasize. The discussion was aimed at investment, but a few things caught my attention. I actually had tuned in because I was interested in hearing about the response to Covid-19, but that didn't get discussed a lot.


He was asked about the peace deal, and said that the "short-term issues are being done very, very well" even though some long-term issues might be delayed. He specifically referenced the Kroc Institute, which recently released a report on it. So I went to check out the report. It is, in fact, very carefully worded by clearly negative.
The report presents a quantitative analysis that shows that at the end of the third year of implementation, according to the methodology used by the Barometer Initiative, 25% of stipulations have been fully implemented. Another 15% of stipulations are at an intermediate level of progress, meaning that they are on their way to being fully implemented in their corresponding timelines. A further 34% of commitments are at a minimal state of implementation, having started but made marginal progress. The remaining 26% of  commitments have yet to be initiated. 
This is definitely not "very, very well." Or even "well." His observation was that "you need accountability from the other side." 

Another of his arguments was more accurate, but I don't often hear it mentioned in such a positive manner: there is a lot of investment opportunity in Colombia because it is so highly integrated with the U.S. military, second only to Israel. I am not sure exactly what he had in mind, but it likely does not dovetail well with success implementation of the peace agreement.

As for investment, "let's make the Americas great again!" 

1 comments:

Hari 7:54 AM  

Interesting actually that 40% has been implemented or seen intermediate progress. I think that exceeds expectations, to be frank -- given how much opposition there has been about the agreement, what with the 'no' actually winning in the referendum earlier. Given that it was the end of a half century war, I think it may take some time to really take effect

  © Blogger templates The Professional Template by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP