COLOMBIAN CONGRESSMEN PROPOSE CUTS IN MILITARY SPENDING AS A SOLUTION TO THE PANDEMIC CRISIS
A study realised by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, reported that the national government invested 9.200 million dollars in the defence sector. According to the report, Colombia ranked 26th among the countries with the highest military spending in the world. In addition, it does make it the fourth country in the Americas with the largest military spending, it ranks it second in Latin America. Faced with this situation the opposition in the lead of Iván Cepeda y María José Pizarro said and pointed out that cutting a part of that budget and using it on some issues that are currently urgent in Colombia could help handling the crisis, this is why they joined the global campaign against military spending (GCOMS), which was created in 2014 and is led by the International Peace Bureau. Therefore, as part of the campaign, 33 congressmen and Angelo Cardona of the International Peace Bureau asked President Iván Duque that instead of spending one billion pesos on weapons, that money be used for health personnel and to buy vaccines against COVID-19.
“This campaign makes sense at any time but especially in pandemic conditions, we cannot continue to manufacture and trade weapons instead of saving lives,” said Senator Ivan Cepeda. This is not the first year that the representatives have joined the campaign, since last year they even asked the government, together with 28 other parliamentarians, to reduce and transfer one billion colombian pesos to be invested in the hospital system, to which the ministry committed to allocate 100 billion colombian pesos. This year, together with 33 representatives, they renewed the request to the national government in order to address the crisis the country is experiencing. “The reorientation of part of this military investment towards the strengthening of the health system could help save lives. The National Government must establish priorities putting the health of the population first”, he stressed.
Representative María José Pizarro pointed out that it is not clear whether the Government is betting on an integral peace policy or on a policy that continues the war. “For example, the lives of social leaders have not been efficiently protected and they continue to fall repeatedly. So far this year there have been 31 massacres with 113 deaths. This shows that all the investment in security has not served to protect people and communities”, said the representative. She added that “a hospital is more important than a war tank, those are the lessons that this pandemic should have taught us, we should be building a pact for the fundamentals”.
For his part, Angelo Cardona, representative for Latin America of the International Peace Bureau, commented that Colombia was preparing to acquire 24 fighter planes at a cost of 4.5 billion dollars. The Barcelona Center for Peace Studies in Spain did the research and determined that if Colombia decided to acquire vaccines from Janssen, Astrazeneca, Pfizer and Sinovac and resources would be allocated to negotiate with these pharmaceutical companies, with that budget it could be acquiring around 300,000 doses of vaccine, which would mean that 150,000 people could be saved,” he said.
As part of the campaign, a citizens’ petition on change.org “Less arms! More health and social protection” has also been mobilized by Marco Romero of the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES), Angelo Cardona from the International Peace Bureau (IPB), Iván Cepeda and other Congressmen and public figures of Colombia, calling on governments around the world to reduce part of their investment in the defence sector in order to strengthen the health system. The petition has been signed by more than 130,000 citizens including political leaders, journalists, artists, and academics.
On May 4, 2021, amid violent protests unleashed in Colombia as a result of the proposal for a new tax reform the new Minister of Finance, José Manuel Restrepo, announced that the Government will comply with Cardona’s request to refrain from purchasing the 24 warplanes.
The action of the Colombian congressmen to request the transfer of military spending as an initiative to solve the crisis generated by the pandemic sets a precedent for other governments around the world to unite their voices and demand reductions in military spending.
