COLOMBIA: Guilty Dictator

Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, the ex-strongman who regarded his country as his own private cooky jar, finally got his just desert. By a vote of 62-4 and 65-1, the Colombian Senate convicted Rojas of “overstepping his authority” and of “using the office of President to increase, in an unlawful form, his assets and those of others.” It was the first time a Colombian ex-President faced the music since 1867, when General Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera was convicted of setting up a monopoly on the sale of salt.

The government had taken eight weeks to lay its case, with an endless parade of evidence that Rojas in office had acquired cash, cattle, and “one-thousandth of all the vast land area of Colombia.” Nothing was forgotten—not even a 1936 army fitness report on Major Rojas: “His business instincts carry him to the point of sordidness. Temperament: teetotaler. Conduct: a ladies’ man.”

Rojas did not laugh. Stooped and grey at 59, he bitterly turned the knife on old colleagues. “If there is honesty,” he declared, “you must bring here without exception all those persons who collaborated with my government.” Such a roster, as everyone knew, would include several Senators, and the five members of an army junta that replaced Rojas and now live in honored retirement. His wealth? Ah, said Rojas, there were a few “presents,” received in the spirit given, “whether it was a herd of cows from ranchers of the Ilanos, or a little duck from an unhappy old woman.”

Last week the Senate decided that it had heard enough. In his 40th hour on the stand, the Senate voted by two-thirds majority to cut him off. Declaring angrily that “this is the shame of Colombia when a man can’t defend himself,” Rojas clamped on his hat and left. Two days later, the verdict was read to the empty yellow chair reserved for the defendant. Next week the sentence will be handed down. Maximum penalty from the Senate: loss of political rights, e.g., the right to vote, and his pensions as former general and President. Upon review, Colombia’s Supreme Court can also add a prison sentence of up to twelve years.