We have all witnessed the emotions as former Senator Ingrid Betancourt, the Colombian Presidential candidate kidnapped six years and five months ago by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) while campaigning for the presidency in 2002, hugged, embraced and cuddled the people she loves, her supporters and collaborators. Sen. Betancourt was imprisoned in the jungles of Colombia - the victual of cocaine and drug consumers. This 47-year-old frail-looking lady politician was born in Colombia but lived a substantial part of her life in France.
She recounted her frightful jungle story. The kidnapped had to endure being chained by their necks to trees for hours if not days, to suffer hunger, to live in appalling conditions and to bear sickness. The captives slept in the open with rain soaking them and turning their impoverished grounds and sleeping tents into a vast terrain of sludge.
Apart from that the incarcerated had to challenge deadly and dangerous insects and the constant threat of malaria. At one point Sen. Betancourt was so acutely ill she had to be nourished water with a spoon. From the stories that are starting to emerge, it seems that the worst castigation of all was having to walk in the jungle barefooted. On one occasion, Sen. Betancourt tried to escape together with an American hostage.
For about six days they managed to stay away, alternating between swimming in the river to trying to find their way around acres of jungle hoping to arrive in Brazil sooner rather than later. Then, again Sen. Betancourt and her co-escapee had to turn themselves in because they were running short of provisions and the latter was diabetic. As a corollary she spent something like two or three years chained to the neck with a male hostage shackled 24 hours a day!
CNN.com reports that although Sen. Betancourt and William Perez did not specifically address the degree of brutality they endured, she hinted at it in an interview with France 2. "It was not treatment that you can give to a living being, I won't even speak of a human being," Sen. Betancourt said. "I wouldn't have given the treatment I had to an animal, perhaps not even to a plant".
Conversely, the stateliness of this politician-turned-icon is astonishing. One cannot overlook the way Sen. Betancourt took on the whole Liberal Party Assembly some four years prior to being kidnapped and colluded head-on with the opinionated class, who, in her understanding, were orchestrating a rigged conference governed by corrupt politics. She claimed that politics was more often than not an "act of power anthology" rather than the "art of self-sacrifice" in Colombia.
With Sen. Betancourt's release we have come to realise that this extraordinary politician has a misshapen appreciation of political affairs based on a natural sense of social justice, an insatiable drive towards change and transformation and a strong sagacity for citizenship and service.
Politics for her is really and truly about regenerating communities, improving and recuperating the quality of everyone's life.
As soon as Sen. Betancourt "touched down" one could witness her spindly body but at the same time one couldn't do away with observing a strong-minded, unbendable and level-headed lady. No wonder she was such a prized catch. No surprise it took such a complex operation to bring her back to freedom for us all - to watch, to listen and to savour this narrative.
"Here, in the forest, in the silence and far away, I ponder this question: How was it possible for 150 foreign journalists to reach San Vicente in total safety while a presidential candidate was denied that right! What exactly are the priorities of this government?... I request of the international community that it helps us save at least the possibility of peace in Colombia. Nobody, nobody in Colombia, may barricade the road to peace, the way of dialogue and simply toss the key into the sea... I suffer to see that in Colombia there are those who would close our hearts, harden our spirits, that explain to us that with abductions, the only solution is to wait and do nothing as if human life did not count... I do not request a prisoner exchange, neither for me nor for the other abducted people. This is a decision by the government. The government must remain free and it must not be subject to blackmail or pressure that influences its decisions. But what I do not accept as a Colombian is abandonment by the Colombian state."
The Betancourt ordeal made me quiz: What are the dangers of despotic power and an overgrown state? Can "politics" and "public morality" congregate? How can we shift from "civic life" to "civic glory"? As Sen. Betancourt said "we need to cry very loud to the world for all to hear". She is a dreamer - but (I hope) she's not the only one!
Dr Azzopardi is lecturer at the Department of Youth and Community Studies, Faculty of Education, the University of Malta.