November 5, 2007
Colombia’s Elections Highlight Democratic Shortcomings
by Garry Leech
While there were some signs of democratic advances in Colombia’s recent local elections, for the most part the electoral process again illustrated the weakness of formal electoral democracy in this war-torn nation. The October 28 local elections for governors, mayors and municipal posts were marred by violence as almost twice as many candidates were assassinated this year than during the 2003 campaign—twenty-nine candidates killed compared to 15 four years ago. Furthermore, the elections were plagued by vote buying, threats against voters, illegal campaign financing, government intimidation, massive disenfranchisement of citizens and outright fraud. According to election monitors from the Organization of American States (OAS), the electoral irregularities undermine democracy in Colombia.
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President Alvaro Uribe personally and repeatedly intervened in the campaign for mayor of Bogotá by urging residents of the nation’s capital not to vote for a candidate allegedly supported by the country’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Despite Uribe’s urging, the center-left Democratic Pole’s candidate, Samuel Moreno, won a landslide victory over the president’s preferred choice. Meanwhile, the head of the Democratic Pole, Carlos Gaviria, responded to Uribe’s attempt to publicly link Moreno to the guerrillas by declaring: “That was not only unconstitutional, but beyond all norms of decency.”
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Meanwhile, the five right-wing pro-Uribe parties at the center of the para-politics scandal fielded more than 26,000 candidates throughout the country despite the fact that their leaders were in jail for allegedly collaborating with right-wing paramilitary death squads. Because they had yet to be convicted, these leaders were permitted to orchestrate the campaigns of their respective parties from behind bars. When the final votes were tallied, the five parties had won control of more than 20 percent of Colombia’s towns. Other candidates linked to the paramilitaries won the governorships of Sucre, Córdoba, Magdalena and Antioquia, suggesting that the militias remain a powerful political force in the north.
In some regions, candidates bought the votes that put them into office, according to an Inter Press Service report by Constanza Vieira. The ombudsman for the northwestern department of Chocó, Víctor Raúl Mosquera, noted that the going rate for a vote was $50. Mosquera claimed that all the parties were buying votes with the exception of the Democratic Pole. OAS election observers reported personally witnessing the purchasing of votes with both money and food. One OAS election observer went so far as to point out that
“Colombia has the most backward electoral system in Latin America.”More:
http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia266.htm
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