Ignoring the protests arising from his own nation, as well as other regional governments, President Álvaro Uribe is determined to follow through with the anti-democratic agreement permitting seven military bases to be put in place on Colombian territory.

Another point to be underlined is the total impunity which will be granted to those future U.S military personnel during their stay in that nation.

Uribe will have to explain if he, as a president, is capable of asking the U.S Pentagon to abide by the limited immunity status-agreement (SOFA) signed since 1951 by NATO.

This document establishes that Washington is permitted to keep jurisdiction over its overseas military bases, along with the right to punish those crimes related to their foreign military services, while the host nation can arrest and judge U.S soldiers due to illegal behaviour or crimes such as robberies, assaults, rapes or murders.

It is true this agreement is rarely carried out; however, several nations that have to tolerate a US military presence have all the necessary dignity to demand this formally, including the militarily occupied Iraq. Bogotá has not pronounced anything on this matter yet.

To clarify publicly who will control those U.S military bases is another controversial issue. According to Uribe´s words, it will be the Colombian army’s duty, however, common sense and the U.S military bases´s long history teach us that the concept always applied by Washington in this sense is: “the one who pays is the one who rules” and let’s recall that the necessary money to maintain these overseas U.S military bases comes from the White House.

This is not a secondary matter; it is all about the nation’s sovereignty itself, along with the Colombian population’s dignity as well. In other words, if you allowed a distant neighbour to enter in your house and even gave him a couple of rooms without the chance of setting up the basic ground rules of coexistence, and allow him to be free to do whatever could be desired, then the control of your house would be already lost.

How will President Uribe manage to tell his family there will be foreigners ruling his family life, disturbing, spying and overshadowing relations with nearby neighbouring countries from now on? How will he manage to tell them if U.S soldiers got drunk, beat his compatriots, harassed his Colombian mothers, and raped his sisters, they could not be punished or not even expelled from the country because of an agreement that he has signed.

History has demonstrated through Japan, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, Panama among other host nations, that the U.S military bases always leave a trail of pain and social decay such as alcoholism, drug addition, prostitution and other scourges.

Now is the Colombian President’s opportunity to inform his citizens of the real reasons, not the apparent ones, which made him carry out such a risky decision against his own nation, already burdened by its own problems and contradictions. His people, along with his neighbouring countries deserve to know the truth. That’s if if he has the civic courage to say it publicly without beating about the bush.