Colombia Update: March 2006 On Sunday March 12 this country held Congressional elections. Little changed in terms of who rules Colombia, but these probably rank among the most bizarre elections ever held. And, some of the details are interesting.
These elections truly bring home the meaning of Bourgeois Democracy. Because only the bourgeoisie, big and little, participate. Colombia is a country with a very small proletariat proportionally and a very large petty bourgeoisie. The working class and the poor petty bourgeoisie are basically the same social class, jumping from working as a vendor or small shop keeper to working in a factory or shop and back as required to pay the bills. Most of the petty bourgeoisie is very oppressed, in fact frequently more oppressed than the proletariat. 58% of the eligible voters didnt vote, although unlike in past elections this does not appear to be the result of any organized armed or otherwise boycott of the elections. The FARC´s efforts as reported in the press were minor and ineffective a few power transmission towers blown up, one polling station attacked. The ELN for the first time in its history endorsed voting, although it did not make any official endorsements. About 13% of the ballots cast were annulled because they were improperly marked more even than in Jeb Bushs home state. About 3% of the voters cast blank votes a traditional form of protest. Of the 26% of the eligible voters whose votes were counted, an unknown number of votes were fraudulent. Another unknown number were cast under threats and intimidation in areas controlled or influenced by the paramilitaries. Election laws have recently been updated and refined, and in fact were still being negotiated as the election was about to happen. No one was even quite sure how the ballots were going to be counted, or exactly who was going to count them, as of two days before the elections (Some people say they had already been counted!) Colombia has a kind of proportional representation system. Voters could not vote for the candidates of their choice only for the party or list of their choice. However, on some lists you could put the candidates into a different order than that selected by the party. But on other lists, you could not. There were dozens of parties and lists, but if you wanted to support President Alvaro Uribe Velez, you didnt need to worry about accidentally picking the wrong party: 8 of the parties supported Uribe, and Uribe in turn sort of supported supported six of the eight parties. Since you couldnt vote for candidates, candidates couldnt be elected directly. Parties were elected, or rather, they won seats. Good news for supporters of proportional representation. There are 102 Senate seats, but two are reserved for representatives of indigenous people (seats which have not been assigned yet because of an electoral boycott among indigenous people.) Since there were 100 Senate seats up for grabs in the general election, a party could receive one seat for each 1% of the vote it received. A party that received 5% of the vote, got 5 seats. The first five candidates at the top of the partys list, unless the voters reordered the candidates on the list to give some lower down candidate more votes, were elected. Reordering of lists turned out to be an important detail. Also you could not vote for a candidate by name. You punched a number instead of the name. And, then there were the cases like the party that got 5.7% of the vote for Senate. They got 5 seats, not 6. Seats in Congress are divided with the same method, but based on the vote in each department, and in the special district of Bogotá. Each department, and the capitol district, is allotted seats in Congress according to its proportion of the national population. However, the recent census, carried out last year, has been delayed. Its results could not be used to apportion Congressional seats. The last census, done in 1990, had to be used instead. This was very good news for the Uribistas, since the population of all the cities has mushroomed as a result of paramilitary violence in the countryside (and economic deregulation favoring large landowners against small landowners.) One political result of this demographic shift has been the rise of a new social democratic left in Colombia, the Polo Democratica Alternativa. This umbrella now includes all of the major non-military old left groups (except the social-democratic faction of the Liberal Party, led by Horacio Serpa.) The Polo is electoralist, urban reformist, anti-free trade with the USA, more or less environmentalist, and looks toward an alliance with Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile and farther afield toward Africa and China - as an alternative to current dependence on the USA. It is in favor of a negotiated peace with the FARC and the ELN. While this demographic shift has been strongly reflected in local elections in Bogotá, Medellin, and Cali, it will not be reflected in the new Congress, since the 1990 census was used to apportion seats. Very good news for President Uribe and his friends. Who, of course, control the census process. What were the results of the elections? After all of the above, no one was surprised when the parties that support Uribe Velez won 61% of the Senate, and about the same in the Camara (House of Representatives). The petty bourgeoisie supports Uribe because they want what he offers: security from kidnapping and extortion. The sad truth is that the FARCs great military success during the Pastrana years meant that it was able to kidnap thousands, and spread fear of kidnapping throughout the entire petty bourgeoisie. At the end of the Pastrana administration, the military and the paramilitaries were the two most popular institutions among the Colombian middle class. Uribes election was the result. Now, after nearly four years, Uribismo is unraveling. The Congressional elections show the results. The breakdown among the Uribistas is a little bit interesting. The Partido de la U got 20 Senate seats, the Conservative Party won 18 seats, Cambio Radical won 15 seats, Alas Equipo Colombia won 5 seats, and and Colombia Democratica won 3 seats. Two of the three bigger parties reflect the presidential aspirations of two formerly Liberal Party political dynasties. 1)the Santos family, which owns the most important media company and newspaper in South America. One cousin is currently Vice President, and another Juan Manuel Santos, heads the Partido de La U and would like to be president after Uribe. 2) The Lleras clan. German Vargas Lleras lead Cambio Radical, wnad would also like to be president after Uribe. The Conservative Party is controlled by the Catholic Church heirarchy, which in Colombia means Opus Dei. They plan to run their own presidential candidate after Uribe. The two smaller parties, Alas and Colombia Democratica are the most closely associated with the paramilitaries. They nearly crashed and burned in this election. and strong ties with the paramilitaries and the official military hierarchy. The Conservative Party did make its financial resources public. Its worth noting that the preferential voting system, where voters could reorder the candidates on their party´s list did play a role in this election. Almost all the generals and former military officers, and all of the candidates publicly associated with the paramilitary groups, all running on Uribista lists, were voted down. Within petty bourgeois sentiment there has been a big shift away from the paramilitary organizations. The peace process with the paramilitaries has not legalized and legitimized them, but has had the effect of publicizing their atrocities, their invovlement in drug dealing, and their corruption. Rather than feeling that the paramilitaries have been protecting them, the middle class has come to fear the paramilitaries almost as much as they fear the FARC. The Parliamentary Opposition The parliamentary opposition will consist of the Partido Liberal, the Polo Democratico Alternativo and Convergencia Ciudadana. The Partido Liberal is really just a shadow of its former self. The two main oligarchic factions around the Llleras and Santos families have abandoned the party to the social democrats of Horacio Serpa. Serpa will again be the Liberal candidate for president, but he is in a very weak position. The Liberals won only 17 seats in the Senate, plus Serpa is seen by everone who pays attention as a spineless opportunist. After he lost the last election to Uribe, declared he was leaving politics forever, he took a nice job from Uribe as Colombian ambassador to the Organization of American States. Now many Liberals would like to sneak into the government and serve coffee for Uribe, rather than go jobless in the opposition. The real opposition will be the Polo Democratico, which includes the former M19, most of the former MOIR (once Maoists), most of the Trostkyists, and the supporters of the Communist Party. The Polo won 11 seats in the Senate. Interestingly, in the Polos internal race to determine its presidential candidate, Garlos Gaviria defeat Antonio Navaro Wolf. Navaro Wolf, a former M19 leader, had been expected to win. Gaviria, a judge, is an indpendent radical who has long been associated with the Communist Party although he is emphatic about not being a communist. The third current which theoretically will be in the opposition is Convergencia Ciudadana, led by another former M19er, but which allowed candidates associated with the paramilitaries to run on its lists. The Paramilitary Organizations The paramilitary organizations, which are very publicly demobilizing, have long had an interesting election tactic, basically the same as organized crimes electoral tactic in the United States. They join all mainstream parties. Their candidates have no public political program other than that of the group they belong to. Privately they have an agenda to support and defend the paramilitaries. Recently they departed from this tactic during the peace process publicling advertising the ties between a small number of elected officials, mostly women, and paramilitary leaders. The results were disastrous. Their unofficial capitol is the department of Cordoba, and its capitol city of Monteria. But most of the Carribean coast and the northern part of the valley of the Rio Magdalena are also under their influence or control. After the last elections, in which paramilitary leaders boasted they had won more than 30% of the seats in the Congress and Senate, the clandestine influence of the paramilitaries became a political controversy. The military, the US embassy, and President Uribe all with previously known ties to the paramilitaries deplored the influence of the paramilitaries. This year there were fewer assasinations of candidates and elected officials than prior to other elections mostly local officials and candidates for local office. The press routinely blames the FARC for these killings, although many are in fact the work of paramilitary organizations. The most important, and interesting, assasination attempt this year failed. It was against the German Vargas Lleras, leader of Cambio Radical. The DAS, local version of the FBI, immedaitely announced that the FARC had made the attempt. Vargas Lleras immediately announced that the FARC had not, and that political figures associated with the paramilitaries and the Uribe government had. Nevertheless Vargas Lleras and his party still are loyal Uribistas. The demobilization of the paramilitaries is even more bizarre than the congressional elections. Since Uribe was first elected as president he has been negotiating peace with the paramilitaries. The paramilitary organizations are loosely grouped in the AUC, (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, originalyy de Cordoba.) This is very bizarre, since the paramilitaries never were at war with the government, and the army has always maintained close if not exactly- public, connections with the paramilitaries. Supposedly there were about 20,000 armed members of these organizations. Pompous ceremonies with speeches by politicians and paramiltary leaders have marked the demobilization of each front. Usually far more people are demobilized than guns. Often far more people are demobilized than anyone had thought were members of that particular front. And as soon as one front demobilizes, and new front, with a new name, appears in its place. A system of halfway houses has been set up around the country where the demobilized are housed, and supposedly reinserted into civil society. This means job training and grants to start small businesses, in theory. In reality it has meant armed clashes around the halfway houses, and a sharp increase in gang violence in the neighborhoods around the houses. Bogotás mayor kicked the halfway houses out of the city in a highly publicized confrontation with Uribe Velez. In short, the paramilitary organizations never were really military organizations. There is no record of any armed confrontation between the paramilitaries and the army. The few aremd confronoations betweent he paramilitaries and the FARC that have happened have all been one side routs, with the complete defeat of the paramilitaries involved. The paramilitary organizations appear to be a mix of different kinds of armed groups. Some are the local squads of vigilantes controlled by landowners organizations. They round up and murder union activists, cattle thieves, and suspected communists. Usually the murders take the form of public executions in the town square. Landowners and small town businesses pay dues to their local business associations to make sure that these vigilantes do a good job of keeping the peace. Others are the armed gangs controlled by drug dealers. The drug dealers rent them out to others. Others are military assasination squads working out of official uniform. Increasingly over the years, the three have blended together, as traditional land owners have decided to switch from traditional crops to cocaine and heroin (although some have always been involved in this economic activity.) What next? Next up are the presidential elections. There will be at least three candidates. Uribe Velez, Serpa for the Liberals, and Gaviria for the Polo. Uribe is likely to launch a military offensive against the FARC while he tries to make a peace deal with the ELN both at least in part to polish his credentials for the elections. What the FARC will do is anybodys guess. Speculation is divided between those who think the FARC will also escalate militarily, and those who think the FARC will lay low. What Serpa and Gaviria might do is also a matter of speculation. But a lot fo people are betting that this election will be the end of the Liberal Party as its Senators and members of Congress desert the sinking ship to sign on with Uribe. -- www.marxmail.org
