(Almost) Everybody loves Obama

This post is tangentially related to the forthcoming US elections. I could have written a proper post on how I find this election historical and exciting, and on how hopeful I am in an eventual Obama administration. Also, I could have cited and commented on one of the many of the polls that say that the citizens of the world would elect Barack Husein as president of the USA. I could have done that indeed. Rather, here I prefer to comment on the country that is desperately wishing a McCain administration. Yes, you guessed it: that country is Colombia.

In fact: the government, the media and every semi-informed person in Colombia is convinced that a Republican in the office is the most convenient thing for Colombia. Their reasoning is rather primitive, and above all, stupid: the Colombian opinion tends to believe that a McCain administration will make effective a free-trade agreement (FTA, Tratado de Libre Comercio - TLC, in Spanish) between US and Colombia. You might ask: what's the deal with that?

Before answering let me explain a bit on the relation between US and Colombia. Colombia is important for the US as it represents the focus of the drug problem. Since the term 'war against drugs' was coined (around 30 years ago) Colombia has been understood and treated as the main producer of the drugs that are available in the US. The diplomatic and commercial relations between the two countries have been shaped accordingly. Not surprisingly, Colombia is the second largest recipient in the world of financial and military aid from the US. The most recent initiative for this ---the so-called Plan Colombia--- was approved during the Clinton administration, and maintained during Bush's. What started as a cooperation plan against drug production, slowly moved towards the direct use of US aid to combat the guerrilla. This is something that, to be honest, makes absolute sense, given the proven participation of such groups in the drug business. Naturally, the 'war against terrorism' made it easy to shift the focus of the planned aid.

So, during the last eight years or so, the relations between US and Colombia were mostly based on issues related to the Plan Colombia. There was also a minor commercial component. This is something fundamental for Colombia but certainly irrelevant for the US, as you might imagine. Up to now, there exist some small agreements that make trade somewhat flexible, but these are temporal and full of conditions. (It is worth mentioning that in the legal side, main Colombia exports to the US include flowers and coffee.) So there was a need for a more open agreement eliminating the trade barriers between the countries.

The above of course sounds logic and even necessary. The problem is that the agreement that both governments approved is simply terrible for the majority of Colombian interests. Just think in the following: once the Democrats took the majorities of the congress, they made several changes so to make the thing less unfair. One of the many problems with the agreement, in my view, is that it advocates a notion of commerce that is so wide that it is outrageous.

A couple of examples are useful at this point. One of the things the agreement regulates is the amount of hours of TV produced and aired by Colombian broadcasters. In other words, by means of the agreement, Colombian TV channels should buy and air a fixed amount of movies and TV series made in the US. This is because unregulated TV production in Colombia could potentially affect US companies (!). This is not symmetric, as you can imagine. A second example is the following: thanks to the agreement, US pharmaceutical laboratories and companies would have the right to patent native medicines and fauna and flora present in Colombia. So, for instance, if someone discovers that a certain plant is beneficial for some disease, US laboratories not only could patent that plant and the procedure to extract a medicine out of it, but also Colombia would be forced to buy them that medicine from the US (!)

In this way, the agreement covers a wide spectrum of what can be considered as commerce. Of course, there are portions of the FTA that are convenient for some components of the Colombian economy. The incipient Colombian software industry is one of them. Flower producers would get benefits as well. The position of the government is rather clear: the FTA is far from perfect, and we need it desperately for those who will get benefits of it, regardless of the fact that (i) Colombia is not ready for such an agreement (for instance, we don't have proper highways from/to main ports); (ii) many interests would be affected; (iii) we have no other big commercial partner in the world.

So, this takes us again on why the Colombian government and media really wish another Republican administration. They ignore that the Democrat majorities in the congress will prevail, even in the (hopefully unlikely) case that McCain comes into office. They must think that a scripted speech from Sarah Palin will make the FTA a reality. In fact, for more than a year Democrats have systematically delayed the study of the act enforcing the Colombian FTA, just to make George W really upset. Colombia has become part of the bipartisan discussions and tensions by accident; Nancy Pelosi is a really hated person in Colombia. They have claimed arguments related to human rights violations to justify this position (heavily supported by the Colombian opposition and many leftist Non-Governmental Organizations). The reality is that a FTA is something tremendously unpopular among Americans, specially nowadays. Obama knows this and hence opposes to the FTA, at least in the current terms. He also proposes to shift the focus of the Plan Colombia. Republicans claim that the FTA is necessary to support a 'loyal ally' in the war against terrorism, and that Plan Colombia should be maintained untouched. This is McCain's position. This topic was quickly mentioned in the third presidential debate; this short, predictable mention was largely discussed and analyzed in Colombian newspapers. The same newspapers that gave huge coverage to McCain visit to Colombia, and that only now realize that Obama perhaps could win.

To conclude, if you think that everyone in the world wants Obama as president, think twice. Apart from the neocons and creationists, a significant amount of Colombians might like to have a 72-year old war veteran as president, and a hockey-mom that sees Russia from her balcony as vice-president. Let us simply hope for the best next Tuesday.