THE game is up. All that remained was the date and time to make it public. The debasement in this case, had been brewing for at least 21 months of intense negotiations and night sealed the pact.

In Colombia – as many have noted – the people were sleeping when the Alvaro Uribe government gave into the pressure; he owes so much to Washington! and finally signed the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States despite is being against the national interest and in open defiance of the Cundinamarca Administrative Court that had legally prohibited it.

Last March 27, the republican administration of George W. Bush succeeded in its designs to convert Colombia into an obstacle to integration plans that are quickly positioning Latin America in counter to U.S. interests.

Many voices have been raised in Colombia since President Uribe, together with his counterparts in Peru and Ecuador, initiated negotiations with the Northern neighbor, with a view to the re-colonization of those nations. The U.S. proposal signifies nothing less than that.

It is a fact that the Casa de Nariño and its principal tenant tried to negotiate more favorable conditions for the economy and national sovereignty. In vain.

The more realistic Colombian politicians knew it. Uribe would not obtain even one of his demands. On the contrary, ceding and ceding ground was what predominated in the struggle that in its final stage took him on a lightning trip to Washington in the futile hope that his "friendship" with George W. Bush could have some influence in diminishing the onerous result of the negotiations.

One of the fundamental characteristics of the FTA negotiation processes – already sealed in El Salvador and Peru – is that many of the agreements have not been made public and that is how the signatory states are led into the trap.

In the case of Colombia, it is only known that the medicine manufacturers and the agricultural sector will be profoundly affected. The national pharmaceutical industry will not be able to contain rising prices for medicines nor will the farmers succeed in preventing one million cultivated hectares from disappearing with the subsequent negative effects on the national economy.

Two million tons of tariff-free corn is to enter that Andean country causing national prices to plummet. The same fate will befall soy and the bean crops. And all of them, without exception, will be unable to compete with a state subsidized agricultural structure like that of the United States.

Aviculturists will find themselves in a similar situation given that the agreement authorizes U.S. producers to export 26 million kilograms of chopped chicken to Colombia, a figure that will grow at a rate of more than 5% per year. In this sector alone 250,000 workers will lose their jobs.

Uribe and his negotiating team know what these one-sided agreements mean for Colombia’s rural areas and economy and have planned to raise taxes in order to compensate national producers for their losses. In modern terms: "they are to socialize" the losses.

The damage will be so great that even the World Bank has warned that the agreement will increase poverty in Colombia "at least in the short term".

Jorge Enrique Robledo, a senator of the Polo Democrático Alternativo Party, has stated that this agreement "will cause a veritable economic tsunami against the employment and income of small farmers, indigenous peoples and wage-earners of all types and levels, and will bankrupt vast sectors of industry."

That line of thinking is currently shared by 70% of the Colombian people who have been protesting against the negotiations and the signing of the agreement.

For several days observers and political analysts have talked of nothing else than the political repercussions that the signing of the FTA with the United States could have on the president’s reelection aspirations this May.

However; before that, when this edition goes into circulation on March 12, Congressional elections will be underway for the election of 102 senators and 166 representatives, whose mandate continues until 2010 and in which Uribe has placed his hopes.

These will be the first elections after the political reform approved in 2003 via which those parties that fail to receive more than 2% of the votes will be excluded. This has led to various alliances reaching beyond ideological affinities in the hope of avoiding death at the polls.

That could strengthen the traditional parties and particularly that of Uribe, resulting in a legislature with common interests that can be counted on to approve the recently signed FTA that only comes into effect within 90 days of Congress approval.