Editor's Note:
Gregory Meeks is a Democrat and represents New York's fifth congressional district in the United States House of Representatives.
Rubén Gallego is a Democrat and represents Arizona's seventh congressional district.
The opinions expressed in this comment are yours.
Read more opinion at cnne.com/opinion
(CNN) - The
United States and Colombia are close friends and close friends speak honestly.
That is why, as elected representatives of the United States, we have a very clear message for our Colombian counterparts: show us the respect by staying out of our elections.
In recent weeks, we have noticed a deeply disturbing trend: Several Colombian politicians publicly choose sides in the US elections.
Politicians such as Senator María Fernanda Cabal, Senator Carlos Felipe Mejía and Congressman Juan David Vélez - a Colombian-American citizen with dual citizenship, who we could more reasonably expect to participate in American democracy - have taken to social media, and one has taken the press, to take sides in the next US presidential vote.
Some have even repeated the invention that Vice President Joe Biden is a communist or radical socialist.
Earlier, Senator Gustavo Petro also weighed in and expressed his preference for Biden on Twitter.
"WE WILL MAKE COLOMBIA GREAT AGAIN," Velez wrote on Twitter this month, retweeting a message from President Trump calling Biden a "CASTRO-CHAVISTAS PUPPET" in the Democratic Party.
Cabal hinted that Biden is controlled by the loose collection of left-wing activists known as Antifa.
Mejía tweeted a two-minute video of Latinos for Trump in which campaign aide Mercedes Schlapp, in response to Petro's endorsement of Biden, calls Biden "the candidate of the radical left" and compares him to the Communists.
For the sake of both of our countries, this kind of behavior has to end now.
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Of course, we know that the people who have recently intervened in our election hardly speak for all.
The majority of Colombian politicians, including those in government, continue to respect our democratic institutions and processes.
But just as we would call any Democrat who meddles in the Colombian elections, we believe that the recent party takeover demands an unequivocal response from our friends in Bogotá: enough is enough.
Support for Colombia has never depended on whether there was a Democrat or Republican in the White House, nor on the party affiliation of Colombian presidents.
It should stay that way.
When we first noticed these actions, we were surprised that they came from Colombia, one of our closest democratic partners.
We believe this amounts to a form of electoral interference: Biden is not a communist and, by spreading that message, the Colombian legislators who say this are misinforming American voters and the citizens of their own country.
The unscrupulous trial of even a handful of Colombian politicians damages the image and credibility of the country.
These public comments are deeply unethical.
The absurd lies about Biden representing Fidel Castro or Hugo Chávez-style socialism are downright manipulative.
And playing with the trauma of Colombians who have escaped the violence of the left-wing guerrillas, and that of Venezuelans who have fled the tyrannical government of Nicolás Maduro, is shameful.
This scaremongering does nothing more than cruelly force diaspora families in the United States to relive the pain of their dislocation.
The United States has recently suffered a painful saga over foreign influence in our elections.
After Russian interference in 2016 and the investigation by Robert Mueller, culminating in a 450-page report, led to numerous arrests, foreign attempts to push the American election in either direction are an especially sensitive issue for our country.
These comments are not helpful.
However, at the end of the day, it's not about individual politicians.
It is a partnership built between our two countries over decades, a partnership that we both need now more than ever.
Republicans and Democrats have disagreed in the past on crucial foreign policy issues, but when it comes to support for Colombia, there has been consensus for a long time.
Can you imagine negotiating our most important achievements, from Plan Colombia to the Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Colombia, without the support of both parties?
We doubt it.
What about the United States' support for Colombia's candidacy as a global partner of NATO and a member of the OECD?
Republicans and Democrats swap seats in the White House every few years.
Support for Colombia is a rare constant.
Taking sides in the US elections threatens to undermine the strategic relationship.
None of us want to see our relationship suffer.
That is because we know how much our countries can achieve when we work side by side.
Today, Colombia is much more secure and prosperous than it was twenty years ago, an achievement built on the backs of our brave Colombian partners and facilitated by widespread support here in the United States.
Once again, Colombia faces an unprecedented series of challenges, including the covid-19 pandemic, an economic recession, an increase in insecurity, and the Venezuelan refugee and migrant crisis.
Regardless of whether Biden wins the White House in November, we want nothing more than to maintain, indeed, increase our cooperation with Colombia to address these challenges together.
MIRA: Colombia reaches one million coronavirus infections since the beginning of the pandemic
But the association is not a guarantee.
It is based on mutual trust.
When Colombian politicians choose sides, they jeopardize all that hard-earned goodwill.
With so much uncertainty and so much at stake, now is not the time to play with fire.
Now is not the time to burn bridges.
It is time to strengthen those that we have built, regardless of the party, together.
To do otherwise is shortsighted and promises to jeopardize one of the most essential relationships in the hemisphere.
Elections 2020 United States