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Final note on the Colombian elections... Last Sunday incumbent President Juan Manuel Santos was reelected for a second term with about 8,000,000 votes. His opponent, the Uribista candidate Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, got about 7,000,000 votes. Santos was supported by his own party, the Partido de la U, and by the Liberal Party, Cambio Radical, most of the elected officials of the Conservative Party - but not its Presidential candidate, and almost all of the left. While the left parties did not endorse Santos, the main leaders of the Polo Democartico Alternativo, Marcha Patriotica, the Progresistas and the Partido Verde (which is not really very green or very left), all endorsed Santos int he second round and campaigned for him. The one important exception was Senator Jorge Robledo of the Polo who campaigned for a blank vote. Santos is a cold blooded murderer who brags of being the FARC's worst enemy and enumerates the dozens of FARC leaders who have been killed on his orders. Nevertheless, the Uribistas tried to paint him as a friend of the FARC who was "giving away the country" to the FARC. The Uribistas spread Bizzarre rumors like Santos planned to cut military pensions so that the money could be transferred to the FARC. The central difference between Santos and Uribe is that - like the United States but unlike former President Alvaro Uribe and his acolytes, Santos views military victories as the means to bring about a negotiated peace with the FARC and the ELN rather than as an end in themselves. Most of the left had some version of the view that this was more of a plebiscite on the peace negotiations in which they voted "yes" than a normal Presidential election. The Polo has announced that it will not accept any posts in the government and will remain in opposition. It is not yet clear what the Progresistas of Gustavo Petro are going to do. Santos was elected the first time with the support of Uribe. His oppponent in the second round of elections was Antanas Mockus of the Green Party. Mockus received many of the votes of the left in that election (the rest abstained or cast blank ballots.) In conventional terms, Santos was elected the first time as the leader of a "center-right" coalition, and elected the second time as the leader of a "center-left" coalition. This time around Santos used the pork barrel so freely that it is hard to see how he will manage handing out the favors to such a varied array of crooks and grafters. The only ones left out of the party are the Uribistas, who Santos is now making overtures to in an apparent effort to peal off the more opportunist elements of Uribe´s coalition. Uribe himself is in bitter opposition, having issued a barely veiled call for a military coup immediately after the election results were announced Sunday. TV stations started to broadcast his speech, and then abruptly cut him off. Only later were carefully edited portions of the least inflammatory parts of the speech broadcast. El Tiempo, the most important newspaper in the country and the family organ of President Santos, did not mention Uribe's speech the following day, and to date has buried it with a very brief mention in the back pages. What will happen next is far from clear. Santos will try to finish the peace negotiations with the FARC as quickly as possible. Assuming that a deal is made, it will be submitted to a referendum for approval of the voters. If a deal is made with the FARC, there will almost certainly be a deal with the ELN which began a preliminary phase of negotiations the week before the elections. The electoral left was clearly strengthened by this election, although it remains weak and divided. The Polo has recovered much of its former vote getting ability, while the Progresistas have lost much of theirs. Superficially the Polo seems to have recovered from the damage done to it by the Samuel Moreno scandals. Nevertheless, the independence of all sectors of the electoral left (except Senator Robledo and his faction) is now in question. On the horizon now there are several scandals and trials that have yet to play out. They include the effort to extradite the former head of the DAS (Colombian version of the FBI/CIA combined) under Uribe who is currently avoiding prosecution in exile in Panama for a major bugging scandal in which she orchestrated illegal eavesdropping on the Supreme Court and opposition. They also include the trial of Oscar Zuluaga's IT chief who was arrested for the same kinds of things during the election campaign. Once a peace agreement is in place, it will include a "truth commission" which will have the responsibility of digging out the reasons for the conflict in Colombia and investigating the responsibility of of all the different actors including those who have remained hidden in the shadows. That should be interesting! And, coming up next year in the electoral arena wll be elections for the Mayor of Bogotá. More later, Anthony ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
