WhatFinger


Hugo Chavez's Colombian Senator

Senator Piedad Cordoba Colombia’s Mata Hari



Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba is getting to be such a fixture in Venezuela, that she’s more at home in the corridors of the palace of President Hugo Chavez than she is in her own country. While thousands of Venezuelan troops and tanks have moved to the Colombia border, Cordoba dances her nights away at top Caracas salsa spots like El Mani es Asi. Colombians, whose names are being kept confidential for security reasons, tell Canada Free Press (CFP) that Cordoba vacations in Dominican Republic, come courtesy of a Hugo Chavez credit card.

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Shouldn’t someone be asking how safe are Colombia’s state secrets with Cordoba in Venezuela? Semana, the respected Colombian news magazine rates Senator Piedad Cordoba “the most controversial woman in Colombia”, comparing her guerrilla diplomacy to Jane Fonda’s overtures to Viet Nam in the early 1970s. But Cordoba, who thumbs her nose at her own countrymen, would be better typecast as Mata Hari, the Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan who was executed by firing squad for espionage during World War I. While she’s dancing the Salsa, Colombians are paying her salary. Abroad, Cordoba’s high-handed antics have made her a darling of leftwing media. According to the New York Times, “Ms. Cordoba dines with guerrillas and dons their berets for photos. She wears turbans evoking her African roots, a rare distinction in a country like Colombia where politicians are often expected to be light-skinned men from the moneyed classes.” A somewhat insensitive description of Colombian politicians given that Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, in failing health, is still held captive by FARC; that vice presidential candidate Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzales, a former senator, were released in January only after years of captivity. Among the four hostages released on Feb. 27, all former members of the Colombian Congress, was Gloria Polanco, held since 2001. First-person descriptions from released hostages describe how FARC captives are pulled by chains around their necks. Cordoba, “The Jane Fonda of Colombia”, who started out as an official government mediator in Humanitarian exchange discussions between the government of Colombia and the FARC group, along with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, seems to have sold her own people out. Interviewed between salsa dances by the New York Times, late last month, she taunts Colombians from a country who has since sent 10,000-strong troops with tankers to the Colombian border. “I suppose I’m somewhat unique, the 53-year-old senator said. “But Colombia will just have to get used to me because I’m not going away.” A lawyer, elected as a Liberal Party senator in 2006, Cordoba’s term doesn’t run out until 2010. Emotions run high when Cordoba flies back and forth between Bogotá and Caracas. Fellow passengers hurled insults and threats at her before she boarded a flight in January. Airline officials and customs police had to step in to shield her from further aggression. “It is evident that when a person expresses herself against her country, as Senator Piedad Cordoba has done, well, naturally someone will react,” Carlos Holguin, Colombia’s justice minister, said after the episode. “There are brigades with rotten fruits and vegetables ready for Piedad the next time she’s spotted anywhere on our streets,” a Bogotá businessman told CFP. Defiantly open about her support of Chavez, rumours run rampant in Bogotá that there is a romantic connection between the errant senator and the Venezuelan president. But Cordoba’s loyalty to Colombia was under question long before she sided with Chavez. Cordoba was judicially denounced for treason under Colombian law after making alleged seditious declarations against the Colombian government and its presidency during a political event in Mexico in March of 2007, a charge, which is currently under investigation, by the Colombian Supreme Court. Nor does Colombia’s AWOL senator keep her drama queen conduct strictly for the dance floor. On Dec. 20, 2007 Cordoba accused an unspecified “top Colombian government official” of orchestrating an assassination attempt toward her on Venezuelan soil. “So far no proof or testimony about the alleged conspiracy is known.” (Wikipedia). The flamboyant career politician, first elected to public office as a council woman in Medellin for a period of two years in 1988, claims she has been the victim of two assassination attempts. Besides spending time at the Venezuela palace and tripping the light fantastic in Caracas, the only other extended period of time she was away from Colombia was the one year and two months she spent in exile in Montreal, Canada--another country she openly deplores. In 1999, Cordoba was kidnapped by members of a right-wing paramilitary death squad. Released within weeks, she fled to safer ground. Cordoba describes the period she spent with her four children in Montreal as one of the most painful in her life. Navigating the bureaucracy of Canada’s system for political refugees was daunting, she said, as was starting anew in such a different society. “There was no house with a pool and a car in the garage waiting for us,” she said. Asked about comments in Colombia that she should simply stay in Venezuela, Cordoba said she had no plan to so. “It’s not surprising. In Colombia, with my face, my turban, my words, I’m Public Enemy No. l.” But Cordoba will never be number one as long as that dubious honour is held by Hugo Chavez.

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Judi McLeod -- Bio and Archives -- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

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