A territorial spat with Nicaragua gives Colombia's president a reprieve from troubles at home
By S.B. | BOGOTÁ
NOTHING brings together domestic foes like an external enemy. So when President Juan Manuel Santos announced that Colombia would not heed a ruling last November by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague that granted 70,000 sq km (27,000 square miles) of the Caribbean Sea that Colombians have considered their own since 1928 to Nicaragua, even his harshest critics applauded.
In a nationally televised address on September 9th Mr Santos forcefully declared that the ruling was "not applicable" in the absence of a treaty with Nicaragua to define maritime borders. Colombia would oppose what he called Nicaragua's "expansionist pretensions" in the Caribbean. Everyone from Alvaro Uribe, Mr Santos's ultra-conservative predecessor and now his fierce opponent, to the leftist Democratic Pole party cheered.
The ICJ's decision recognised Colombia's sovereignty over the islands of the San Andrés and Providencia archipelago, but awarded Nicaragua an exclusive economic zone and access to underwater oil and gas deposits, as well as fishing rights, extending 200 nautical miles (370km) from its coast. Besides depriving Colombia of the resource riches, the ruling leaves two (uninhabited) islets cut off from the rest of the archipelago by a tongue of newly Nicaraguan sea.
To many Colombians, and especially tub-thumping-patriot sort like Mr Uribe, this was too much to bear. Since November they have called on the government to ignore the ICJ, even if this meant going to war with Nicaragua. The government took a less impulsive approach, analysing its options for ten months first. The resulting plan tries to strike a balance between appeasing domestic ire and maintaining Colombia's image abroad as a serious regional player.
The studied ambiguity of Mr Santos's strategy prevented Nicaragua from treating the speech as an open provocation. Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua'a president, read it as an invitation to negotiate. "We are willing to work so that we can reach a treaty based on the court's ruling," he said a day later.
At home, meanwhile, Mr Santos's administration relished a reprieve—however brief—from the constant badgering by opposition politicians over fierce protests by farmers, miners and truckers, and the slow pace of peace talks with leftist FARC rebels to end a half-century of conflict. The president's approval rating, which one recent poll put at an abysmal 21%, has been plumbing new depths. By appearing to stand up to a foreign court he may be hoping for a fillip—just in time for a November deadline to announce whether he will stand for re-election.
