Odd pair in presidential palace

Press, 10 November 1983, Page 21

Odd pair in presidential palace

From

GEOFFREY MATTHEWS,

in Bogota

At least once a week, sometimes more, the President of Colombia, Belisario Betancur, a Conservative, takes time off to relax by playing billiards or chess with an opponent who between games attacks the Government with all the fervour of a “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist.” ' Despite the revolutionary taunts aimed at him, the President has yet to be put off his game, always winning at billiards. The chess usually ends — like their political arguments — in stalemate. The President’s opponent is his only son (he also has two daughters), Diego Betancur Alvarez, a leading figure in a Maoist revolutionary workers’ party known by its Spanish initials M.0.1.R. Diego, aged 35, voted and campaigned for M.0.1.R. at the national elections which brought his father to power last year. More recently he has led demonstrations against his father’s Government. Diego is without doubt the only extreme Left-wing politician in Colombia who is guarded day and night by three secret service agents on the Government’s payroll. They have been his constant shadows since his father took office 15 months ago — with good reason. Although M.0.1.R. rejects the armed struggle, other Left-wing political groups do not. They could well regard him as a tempting target for a headline-grabbing political kidnapping. The President, like his son, is a political maverick who is motivated by high ideals. He may have been the candidate of the Conservative Party when he triumphed over the then ruling Liberals last year, but he was always a populist. Furthermore, in the view 1 of most observers, he has shifted decidedly leftwards in both - ' domestic and foreign policies since winning office. At home he has pledged his Government .to major social reform and offered a comprehensive amnesty to the nation’s various guerrilla groups. In foreign policy, he has taken Colombia into the Non-Aligned Group, has improved previously chilly relations with Cuba and Nicaragua, and has been the driving force behind the efforts of the Contadora group — with Mexico,

Venezuela, and Panama — to find a peaceful solution to the conflicts of Central America.

Opinion polls show Belisario Betancur to be the most popular President in the polling history of this country. He also has the most humble origins of any President to hold office in Colombia. He grew up in a dirt-poor rural community and through sheer determination and much sacrifice, studied law and economics and became a successful lawyer and journalist. As a result his children have grown up in comfort and attended the best private schools. Despite his revolutionary politics, Diego, an agronomist, and his own family live in an apartment in one of Bogota’s most exclusive neighbourhoods. From his luxury apartment, Diego talks of M.0.1.R.’s plans to “expel American imperialism, check Soviet expansionism, and realise in Colombia a truly democratic and anti-feudal revolution.” Later this month he will campaign on the same themes, and against what he terms “Belisarist demagoguery,” when as one of M.O.LR.’s candidates he contests municipal elections in Bogota. In 1970, Diego campaigned for his father during one of Belisario Betancur’s early unsuccessful bids for the presidency. By 1972, however, he had become a M.0.1.R. militant after getting involved in Left-wing politics at university. When his visits to the presidential palace end and he drives home late at night, the sight of prostitutes and beggars ‘in the streets of central Bogota underline to him, he says, that “while with the present Government we are' assured that everything has changed, in reality everthing is continuing the same.” In the 1982 presidential election M.0.1.R. polled less than one half of a percentage point of the total vote. Even so, Diego remains convinced that one day revolution will sweep Colombia to allow the “forging of socialism and produce a country without class distinctions and without exploiters or exploited.” Copyright — London Observer Service.