22 — The Prince George Citizen — Thursday, April 21, 1988 LATIN AMERICA, CARIBBEAN Drug corruption undermines political stability by DAVE TODD Southam News SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — The corruption of politicians and public officials by Colombia’s fabulously wealthy Medellin cocaine cartel has become a major electoral and social issue in much of Latin America and the Caribbean. The insidious intrusion of what is commonly referred to in the region as narcopolitics is also giving rise to fears that some countries compromised by the Medellin cartel, which is responsible for most of the world’s cocaine trade, may be on the brink of sacrificing their ability to function as sovereign nations. In Colombia, the sheer financial weight and armed force the drug lords command have cowed and bribed the nation’s justice system into submission. More than 30 judges have been murdered by drug assassins while another 400 magistrates have been investigated since 1985 for taking cartel bribes. But perhaps the most dramatic illustration so far of the Medellin gang’s corrupting influence occurred last month. In the space of a single day, the attorney general of Colombia and justice minister of neighboring Venezuela were forced to resign. Colombian Attorney General Alfredo Gutierrez Marquez, whose predecessor had been gunned down by Medellin cartel agents just weeks earlier, quickly vacated his LEGALS Province Ol British Columbia Ministry ol Forests and Lands Govemmerrt Gouvemement | Hp ol Canada du Canada Canadian Service Forestry Service Canadien des forits SURVIVAL SURVEY CONTRACT S88G07-001 Sealed lenders lor the following Survival Survey Contract will be received by the District Manager. Ministry of Forests and Lands 9000-17th Street, Dawson Creek, B C . V1G 4A4 on the date shown below Contract S88G07-001 Located in the Dawson Creek area, Dawson Creek Forest District for Survival Surveys on 2.036 hectares Viewing is not mandatory To be eligible to bid on above contract, contractor must be able to show proof of completion of the Ministry of Forests approved contractor's survey course Deadline for receipt of tenders for the above contract is 3 30 p m on May 9. 1988 at which time all tenders will be opened Tenders must be submitted on the form and in the envelopes supplied which, with particulars may be obtained from the Ministry of Forests District Office noted above The lowest or any tender will not necessarily be accepted The work will be administered by the British Columbia Ministry of Forests and Lands CANADIAN FOREST PRODUCTS LTD. FORT ST. JAMES DIVISION or ISLE PIERRE DIVISION PESTICIDE USE PERMIT NUMBER 124-088-88/90 Notice is given pursuant to Section 18 of the Pesticide Control Act Regulations that Canadian Forest Products Ltd , Fort SI James or Isle Pierre Division will undertake herbicide treatment as follows Purpose & Method Pre and Post COG treatment to control Aspen by the spot application of Velpar using spears and/or spot guns Location of Treatment Oop Lake. Kuzkwa River and North of Kloch Lake Herbicide Common Name Velpar Size of Area 398 Commencement Date 88 05-01 Completion Date 90-09-30 Copies of the permit and maps of the proiect areas may be examined during regular office hours at the offices of Canadian Forest Products Ltd . Fort St James/Isle Pierre Division, Pulpmill Road. Prince George. B C CANADIAN FOREST PRODUCTS LTD. FORT ST. JAMES/ISLE PIERRE DIVISION P.O. BOX 6000 PRINCE GEORGE, B.C. V2N 2K3 Phone 561-3600 l’« cabinet post after it was revealed his brother’s ranch was a transit centre for cocaine shipments destined to the United States. The Venezuelan justice chief, Jose Manzo Gonzalez, was exposed amid allegations he operated a secret police force — nicknamed “Manzopol” — that was deeply involved in facilitating cocaine shipments from Colombia to North America, by way of Caribbean islands off the Venezuelan coast. The cocaine issue has become a volatile element in the six-month Venezuelan presidential campaign that formally begins next month. The two leading parties have accused each other of being under the influence of the Medellin cartel. The accusations have become so heated that the country’s electoral council has intervened to put a brake on the mutual recrimination. Meanwhile, along the border between Venezuela and Colombia, there is growing tension caused by the incursion of what are in effect Colombian jungle cocaine armies of peasants invading and seizing Venezuelan territory. The Colombian insurgents have been displacing local farmers and have manufactured a virtual criminal state within a state inside the Venezuelan frontier. “Drug trafficking constitutes a clear and present danger to the very survival of democracies in certain countries which have long LEGALS ■■ C wnuw jjl A Province ot British Columbia Ministry of Forests and Lands NOTICE INVITING APPLICATIONS FOR PREPARATION OF TOTAL-CHANCE DEVELOPMENT PLAN FOR WALKER CREEK DRAINAGE Sealed tenders for preparation of Total-Chance Development Plan for the Walker Creek drainage situated 170 Km east of Prince George will be received by the District Manager, Prince George East Forest District up to 10 30 a m on Thursday. May 5, 1988, and opened subsequently. Maintenance functions include contour mapping, timber typing, harvesting block layout and road location Applicants must have experience in block layout for non-conventional harvesting systems Deadline for completion of the project is August 15, 1988 Tenders must be submitted on the forms and m the envelope supplied. No tender shall be considered having any qualifying clauses whatsoever, and the lowest or any tender will not necessarily be accepted Particulars and tender forms may be obtained from the District Manager, 4055-15th Avenue, Prince George, B.C. V2N 1A5 L-2-94 Province ol | British Columbia Ministry of Forests and Lands _ , Government Gouvemement IT ol Canada du Canada Canadian Service Forestry Service Canadien des forfets FREE TO GROW SURVEY CONTRACT FG88G07-001 Sealed tenders for the following Free to Grow Survey Contract will be received by the District Manager, Ministry of Forests and Lands 9000-17th Street. Dawson Creek. BC. V1G 4A4 on the date shown below Contract FG88G07-001 Located in the Dawson Creek area. Dawson Creek Forest District for Free to Grow Surveys on 913 hectares Viewing is not mandatory To be eligible to bid on above contract, contractor must be able to show proof of completion of the Ministry of Forests approved contractor's survey course Deadline for receipt of tenders for the above contract is 3 30 p m on May 9. 1988 at which time all tenders will be opened Tenders must be submitted on the form and in the envelopes supplied which, with particulars may be obtained from the Ministry of Forests District Office noted above The lowest or any tender will not necessarily be accepted The work will be administered by the British Columbia Ministry of Forests and Lands Province of British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and Highways HIGHWAYS-TENDERS PRINCE GEORGE NORTH ELECTORAL DISTRICT Proiect No M-4870-0030 Crushed Granular Aggregate in Stockpile in 66 Mile #4122 and Kelly 4101, Pits in the Prince George Highways District 15.000 m3 19 mm Asphalt Mix 66 Mile Pit and 10.000 m3 19 mm High Fines Surfacing in Kelly Pit Pit preview will be held on May 3-88 by arrangement with Phil Erickson. District Technician (565-6180) in Prince George Tender opening date Tuesday. May 17th, 1988 NORTH PEACE RIVER ELECTORAL DISTRICT Proiect No M-4870-0035 Crushed Granular Aggregate in Stockpile in Pickell #4495 Pit in the Ft St John Highways District 15.000 m3 19 mm High Fines Pit preview will be held on May 6-88 by arrangement with Miles Webster, District Manager (787-3237) in Ft St John Tender opening date Thursday, May 19th. 1988 Project No M-4870-0036 Crushed Granular Aggregate in Stockpile in Imperial #4429 Pit in the Ft St John Highways District 50.000 m3 19 mm High Fines Pit preview will be held on May 6-88 by arrangement with Miles Webster, District Manager (787-3237) in Ft St John Tender opening date Thursday, May 26th. 1988 Documentation is available for the sum of $15 00 and are also available at Prince George District Office SEALED TENDERS, completed in accordance with the Instructions to bidders on the forms and in the envelopes provided, will be received by the Ministry of Transportation and Highways at 940 Blanshard Street. 4th floor. Victoria. B C , V8W 3E6. unless otherwise specified, up to 2 p m (local Victoria time) on the day of the tender opening, at which time tenders will be opened in public Tenders must be accompanied by a Surety Bid Bond or Certified Deposit Cheque unless otherwise stated above The lowest or any tender not necessarily accepted Tender forms with envelopes, plans, specifications, and conditions of tender can be obtained from the Ministry of Transportation and Highways, 940 Blanshard Street, Victoria. BC V8W 3E6 (telephone 387-1411). and for the convenience of lower mainland Contractors only, from 7818-6th Street. Burnaby, BC. V3N 4N8 (telephone 660-8260), unless otherwise specified, between the hours of 8 30 a m and 4 30 p m Monday to Friday. except holidays The Ministry "General Specifications for Highway Construction,'' to which the construction of this contract shall conform, are also available for the sum of $40 00 Payment, as and when required, for proiect documentation and Ministry "General Specifications for Highway Construction" can be made through any Highways District Office Cheques or money orders shall be made payable to the Minister ot Finance and Corporate Relations No such purchases are refundable RD FLITTON Deputy Minister l-i 94 Corruption of public officials and military officers by the international cocaine cartels is spreading like a plague through Latin America and the Caribbean, prompting alarm about the region's long-term political stability. been friends and allies of the United States,” the former head of the U.S. military’s Panama-based Southern Command, retired General Paul Gorman told a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee in January. Recent events in Panama have focused attention on the role that the country’s strongman, General Manuel Antonio Noriega, has played in transforming what some captured former associates — now attempting to bargain for lesser jail terms in the U.S. — refer to as “a criminal country.” But even in Panama’s determinedly placid northern neighbor, Costa Rica, there is growing concern about drug corruption by the Colombian cartel bosses. Costa Rica’s (and Central America’s) largest and most influential newspaper, La Nacion, conducted a major investigation of the narcotics trade last year with the extensive co-operation of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Lately, La Nacion has begun to warn of the influence the Medellin cartel could bring to bear on the GOPHER IS 'STRANGE1 BREED by HELEN BRANSYVELL CALGARY (CP) — Richardson’s ground squirrels face death square on. The normally timid little rodents rise on their hind legs to peer fearlessly at the speed-blurred shapes that are the chariots of their death. They get mowed down by the thousands each spring and summer. Prairie highways become giant griddles for their pancakelike remains. In a truly bizarre ritual, those remains are gobbled up by other ground squirrels risking their own lives to munch on friends and relations. This is one strange breed of rodent. Commonly called prairie dogs or gophers, the frisky, tan-colored rodents are in fact neither. They are Richardson’s ground squirrels. Prairie dogs are similar to ground squirrels but are larger, don’t hibernate and are found more in the United States than in Canada. As their name suggests, Richardson’s ground squirrels are burrow-dwelling relatives of the grey, black and red squirrels that scamper along tree branches and telephone wires across Canada. Gail Michener has been studying Richardson’s ground squirrels for 20 years. The University of Lethbridge biology professor became intrigued by the rodents when, after migrating from Australia, she discovered virtually nothing was known about them. She has since filled in many of the gaps and thinks she knows the answer to the most perplexing and frequently asked question about ground squirrels: “Why do they stand up there and let you run over them?” “They just haven’t been equipped through evolution to assess something of that size and speed,” she insists. Despite their propensity for pavement death, ground squirrels aren’t stupid. They can remember the location of burrows from one year to the next and they recognize their parents and their offspring. “They retain these kinship relationships throughout their lives,” which average three years but can stretch to five or six. They’re also slaves to lust — or the instinctive drive to reproduce. Male ground squirrels compete ferociously in a bid to impregnate as many females as possible — even though there are generally four or five females for every male. “They live to mate — and then to recover from the mating season, which is extremely intense on the males.” Province ol British Columbia Ministry ot Forests RECREATION SITE MAINTENANCE PRINCE GEORGE EAST FOREST DISTRICT Sealed tenders for Recreation Site Maintenance Contract PGE 88-1 will be received by the District Manager, Prince George East Forest District up to 3 30 P M. (PDT) on Tuesday. May 3. 1988 and opened subsequently. Maintenance functions include garbage collection and disposal, provision of firewood. pit toilet maintenance, minor facility repairs and facility painting Tenders must be submitted on the forms and m the envelope supplied No tender shall be considered having any qualifying clauses whatsoever, and the lowest or any tender will not necessarily be accepted Particulars and tender forms may be obtained from the District Manager, 4055-15th Avenue, Prince George, BC V2N 1A5 SK-L2M race to succeed Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias in the 1990 presidential race. The newspaper claims Arias’s ruling social democratic party and its opposition conservative coalition are under pressure from drug interests. In Honduras, this month’s kidnapping of Medellin cartel kingpin Juan Matta by the Honduran army with the help of U.S. agents has focused North American attention on the extent to which another Central American nation has been penetrated by the drug mafia — and the lengths U.S. officials are willing to go to, even if this means pirate operations in the face of local law. In Haiti, U.S. State Department sources have told Southam News that long before revelations this year of connections between the Medellin cartel and high-ranking Haitian army officers the country was known to be an important transhipment point for drugs between South America and Florida. One frustrated ex-U.S. embassy official in Port-au-Prince, now serving in Washington, said his bosses on the Caribbean desk of the State Department refused repeatedly to make such information public in the months before the February 1987 collapse of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier’s regime. They said they saw no immediate political value in exposing what they knew of the Duvalier circle’s cocaine links. The main connection between the Medellin cartel and dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier’s family was through Duvalier’s father-in-law and other relatives of his wife, Michelle Bennet. A brother of dictator Duvalier’s wife was jailed in the early 1980s in Florida for drug-related offences. Recent revelations about the activities of Haiti’s most powerful army chief, Col. Jean-Claude Paul, indicate he may have been charging up to $250,000 a time for his personal permission for Colombian cocaine-laden planes to land in security in Haiti, refuel at his private airstrip, and head for final runs to points in the southern United States. In Jamaica, another country, like Venezuela, in which there is a bitter pre-election campaign under way amid accusations of high-level drug-funding, the narcotics business is an important key to under standing the political dynamic. Jamaica has long been a country in which drugs and politics have been intimately linked. But only in recent years has there been any discernible connection between traditional drug bosses who specialize in the islands’s most lucrative homegrown cash crop — marijuana — and cocaine. Jamaican authorities now say a disturbing connection has emerged between the island’s main marijuana syndicates and South American drug organizations. In some cases, cocaine, not hard currency, is being used as the medium of payment in return for the right to use Jamaican landing fields for transhipment north of South American drugs. “Marketers of ganja (the local name for marijuana) in Jamaica are now marketing cocaine and perhaps we are now seeing the drug beginning to take root economically,” says Dr. Winston Davidson, of Jamaica’s National Council on Drug Abuse. Elsewhere in the Caribbean, more than 50 police officers were suspended from their jobs and four judges fired last year in Trinidad on suspicion or indictment for collaborating with South American cocaine lords. There is a host of similar stories from throughout the Caribbean, on the South American periphery, since the Commonwealth Secretariat’s commercial crime unit warned in 1986 that the whole of the Caribbean was in danger of becoming a rosary of blessed beads for the drug industry: a possible chain of what he called “criminal states.” Liza's sport Liza's snack Liza's smile Participaction makes perfect HnvancKn I LEGALS Prince Georqe «V£ & Meet Mystery AM ' ~ 2i April 20 — 7-o‘nam Deverell 563 9^ A Public Service Advertisement Inserted by The Citizen Newspaper OSCAR CONTEST WINNER 1ST PRIZE: ANDIE BENNIS0N Andie receives her prize, a General Electric VCR, from Citizen promotions co-ordinator, Hank Swankhuizen. Julie Paterson and Susan Kotch of Prince George were the winners of the runner up prizes of 12 double guest movie passes courtesy of Odeon Theatres. Weekly prize winners of a VCR rental and 4 movies were: Marlene Burt, Carolyn Linden, Cindy Harlow, Dianne Sears, Louie George, Leo Crespeigne, all of Prince George. Thank-you to all who entered our Oscar Contest. The Prince George Citizen “The Heartbeat of Your City”