The negotiation with the exparamilitaries faces Petro with their peace commissioner

The ambitious total peace policy, with which Colombian president Gustavo Petro seeks to negotiate simultaneously with all the country’s armed groups, generates increasing tensions in the government. On April 29, it was formally installed, with low profile and in the Montería city, a work table that seeks to “close the Ralito agreement”, the pact signed in 2003 between the State and the bosses of the then United Self -Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). The initiative has the participation of 18 of the main paramilitary excomandants, including Salvatore Mancuso, but not that of the Government’s Peace Commissioner, Otty Patiño, despite the fact that Petro supports the process.

Since the beginning of his mandate, in August 2022, Petro has criticized the pact signed by his political enemy, former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez, 22 years ago. In October 2024, in a meeting with Mancuso in Montería, the president announced that his government was going to be in charge of “finishing the demobilization process.” “We can reactivate the peace table because the process is not over, the assets that you gave to justice were not given to the victims and the process was interrupted.” That day, after an exchange of hats, the president proposed to install a negotiating table with the exparamilitaries. “This time without betrayal and without fear of truth,” said Uribe in veiled criticism. The paramilitaries have pointed out the former president of betrayal by having extradited them in 2005, and having done so to prevent the alleged illegal relationships with the then president. Uribe has always argued that they violated the agreement by continuing to commit crimes from jail.

The table installed in Montería is, precisely, the concretion of Petro’s idea. But it has not been simple because of the key element that, unlike the rest of total peace negotiations, the counterpart of the government is not an armed group. A source close to that table says that Commissioner Patiño has opposed to negotiate with exparamilitaries. From the Office of the High Commissioner of Peace they have delivered a sharp response: there is no dialogue with them.

Therefore, who sat with the former paramilitaries on behalf of the Government was not Patiño but the director of the National Center for Historical Memory (CNMH), María Gaitán Valencia. The former commanders, who have been demobilized for 23 years, have raised commitments such as helping in the search for missing, delivering land and making new acts of recognition to the victims. Juan Carlos Villamizar, an advisor to the process, explains that they have also requested that their judicial files be closed in the framework of the Justice and Peace System, the transitional justice that the agreement investigates its crimes. “This process is going to be short, three or four months and is signed,” says the lawyer. If the government accepts the proposal, and there are no legal entanglements, the exparamilitaries would be exempt from their pending obligations with justice.

That difficult proposal has gone unnoticed, as the government has given little visibility to the table. The CNMH must submit in the coming weeks a report on the implementation of the Ralito Agreement, the slopes that seek to settle and the deadlines for it. From the center they agree that, after that diagnosis, the negotiation will be a short process, which would end during this year. Carlos Blanco, a lawyer for several demobilized, has announced that they will hold a new meeting in Bucaramanga in order to consolidate a national table of former members of the AUC, which would realize their proposals to the government.

10 months after the legislative elections, the eagerness is notorious. In a recent Council of Ministers, the President reiterated to his intention to “finish” the Ralito process. “I delivered a list to be peace managers, thinking that perhaps with that figure they could leave (from prison), but no (…) I am thinking that two can leave, if they commit to finish the process.” Another source close to that table has confirmed that one that would be free would be Carlos Mario Jiménez, Macaque. The former commander pays a 17 -year prison sentence in the maximum security prison of Itagüí (Antioquia), and who has accompanied the approaches that the Government has made, within the total peace, with the criminal gangs of Medellín and its surroundings.

At the same televised meeting, the head of state said the negotiation “could include members of the Gulf clan.” Villamizar explains that if the legal framework that will support Ralito’s closing table manages to include the self -styled Gaitanist army of Colombia, it would become one of the most ambitious processes of total peace. The problem is that there is no legal structure that allows an agreement. Therefore, the lawyer launches a proposal: “If justice and peace are able to adapt to the new Ralito table and arrange it to the rearm (under the premise that clan members are repeat offenders of the AUC), the problem is solved.”

The Mancuso advisor sees on the table, also, a political play. “It is not crazy to say that signing a process and closing the Ralito agreement is a political victory of Petro over Uribe,” he says, referring to one of the most precious achievements of former right -wing president has been his negotiation with the Parasand that a new agreement at least weakened that claim. In addition, it would be an especially relevant success for the president who promised an easy negotiation with the ELN guerrillas and has seen how his total peace flag is undone.