Pubdate: Wed, 01 May 2002
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2002 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: T. Christian Miller, Times Staff Writer

COLOMBIA VOTE PUTS REBELS ON NOTICE

Latin America: Hard-Liner Uribe Becomes Next President After Promising To 
Step Up The War Against The Nation's Leftist Guerrillas.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Colombians elected as their next president Sunday a 
hard-liner who promised to aggressively confront this nation's leftist 
guerrillas, an option that promises to broaden the country's bloody 
internal war.

With 98% of the vote counted, conservative career politician Alvaro Uribe 
had won almost 53% of the ballots, enough to avoid a runoff election. His 
major opponents conceded defeat.

Uribe's accession to the presidency of this war-torn nation appears to 
augur a new and more dangerous stage in Colombia's civil war, which has 
grown increasingly violent since the collapse of peace talks earlier this 
year. A stepped-up war would destabilize the region, encourage increased 
U.S. military intervention and threaten Latin America's oldest democracy 
with economic and social chaos.

Uribe, 49, who did not campaign in public after surviving numerous 
assassination attempts, appeared exhausted as he addressed the media late 
Sunday night. His face wan, his eyes red, he seemed to choke up as he 
referred to his father, killed by guerrillas during a botched kidnapping 
attempt 19 years ago. He promised the nation peace through strength.

"Reinforcing the military is going to be a necessary road for the 
protection of our citizens and the total recovery of human rights," Uribe 
said. "The international community must know that Colombia has expressed 
its willingness to return to civility, to restore order."

Uribe also pledged educational and economic reform, and said he would 
attack rampant corruption. But achieving security, he said, was key. He 
promised to ask the guerrillas to negotiate, but only if they gave up 
terrorist attacks and laid down their arms.

The guerrillas have consistently rejected calls for a cease-fire.

"From this moment on, we are going to enact our beliefs in order to achieve 
democratic security for everyone," Uribe said. "Security so they don't 
kidnap the businessman, they don't kill the union leader, they don't extort 
the ranch owner, or the field hand."

Uribe's chief opponent, Horacio Serpa appeared late Sunday at a convention 
center to acknowledge Uribe's victory. A traditional party machine 
politician, Serpa was a distant second with 31.7% of the nearly 11 million 
votes cast. Turnout was estimated at 46% of eligible voters.

Serpa, who had accused Uribe of receiving support from the country's 
right-wing paramilitaries, warned Colombians that a broader war was coming.

"I warned this country about the dangers of authoritarianism and all-out 
war," Serpa said as he stood surrounded by his wife, children and 
supporters. "The future of Colombia cannot be in war."

Other opponents also conceded that Uribe would become Colombia's 43rd 
president, taking office in August.

Luis Eduardo Garzon, a former golf caddie universally known as "Lucho," won 
a surprising third place with 6.2% of the vote as the head of a left-wing 
coalition that insisted on negotiations as the only viable solution to the 
conflict.

He recognized Uribe's victory but promised to continue fighting for peace 
with his new party, known as the Democratic Pole. Noemi Sanin, the 
fourth-place finisher with 5.8% of the vote, also acknowledged Uribe's victory.

"Peace is an indisputable condition for development," said Garzon, later 
adding: "We are not going to have anything to do with war."

U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson showed up at Uribe's campaign headquarters 
to congratulate him, saying the U.S. would have "very close" relations with 
Uribe, who has studied at Oxford and Harvard.

Uribe's victory was the first time since implementation of the country's 
1991 constitution that any president has won outright in the first round. 
Analysts interpreted the results as a stunning show of support in a crowded 
field of four major candidates.

It also bodes well for Uribe's ambitious center-right reform program to 
improve the military, government and public services.

The diminutive politician wants to double the size of Colombia's military. 
He also plans to create a million-member-strong citizen patrol force to 
warn of attacks by the rebels and paramilitaries.

Uribe is seeking direct U.S. funding of the conflict; American aid has been 
confined to drug-fighting efforts. The Bush administration has already 
proposed such a change in part of this year's $657-million aid package to 
Colombia.

Uribe has also proposed slashing the size of Congress, cutting tariffs and 
opening hundreds of new schools.

"It's a clear mandate for Uribe," said Pablo Franky, a political analyst at 
Javeriana University. "I believe it's overwhelming."

Other analysts were less sure. Uribe, running as an independent, is facing 
a legislature filled with hard-core members of the country's traditional 
Liberal Party.

He will also have a hard time implementing his reforms. Colombia's economy 
is suffering, with public debt now equal to nearly half the GDP. 
Unemployment hovers at about 20%, and more than half the population lives 
in poverty.

"Uribe has no political organization. He can't count on anything," said 
Elisabeth Ungar, an analyst with the University of the Andes.

But for many Colombians, such concerns were secondary to a more aggressive 
stance against the guerrillas as a way to halt a conflict that costs 3,500 
lives a year, the vast majority civilians killed by either rebels or 
paramilitaries.

Outgoing President Andres Pastrana, who is constitutionally barred from 
seeking reelection, pursued three years of peace talks with the guerrillas. 
They ended in failure, with the rebels having used the time and a special 
demilitarized zone created for the talks to prepare for combat and solidify 
their control of the cocaine trade that funds their war.

Uribe "knows how to lead with weapons, not words," said Ciro Mansalve, 70, 
who braved pouring rain in Bogota, the capital, to vote for Uribe. "Get rid 
of the guerrillas, get rid of the war."

Colombians needed no reminder of the cost of the conflict in the weeks and 
months leading up to the elections.

One candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, was kidnapped and remained in captivity 
Sunday. Local governors, congressional representatives and mayors were 
kidnapped or killed during the campaign.

Three weeks ago, guerrillas fighting paramilitaries in a forgotten corner 
of the country launched a homemade rocket that killed 119 people seeking 
refuge in a church.

In the days immediately before the vote, the sound of car bombs and gunfire 
reverberated throughout the country. Rebels blew up bridges, knocked down 
power lines and blocked major roads.

Both guerrillas and paramilitaries menaced the mostly rural populations 
they dominate. They burned voting cards and threatened to disrupt 
elections. Overall, however, voting proceeded smoothly Sunday, a remarkable 
fact given that the rebels control about 40% of the national territory, 
most of it in sparsely populated rural areas.

A massive show of more than 210,000 police and military troops kept 
violence to a minimum. On Sunday, rebels from the Revolutionary Armed 
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, burned voting materials in five of the 
country's 1,000 counties.

About 20% of the voting booths in rural areas had to be moved into cities 
for security.

Voters lined up in searing heat and pouring rain, from this country's vast 
lowland jungles to the fog-shrouded Andes.

Not everyone was happy with Uribe's victory. While Uribe won the vote in 21 
of Colombia's 32 departments and one capital district, Serpa won in some of 
its poorest.

Serpa's support was strongest along the Caribbean coast where the Liberal 
Party has long held sway, but he also won many departments on Colombia's 
vast eastern plains, where rebels have long been strong and government 
services are nearly nonexistent.

"For us, [Uribe] represents the rich. We are the poor.... Peace interests 
us more than anything," said Bonifacio Chicunque, a member of the Kamentxa 
indigenous tribe who is originally from Putumayo, where most of Colombia's 
cocaine is grown.

Human rights groups worried that Uribe's victory and his support of a 
strong military might encourage more violence by paramilitaries, many of 
whom are thought to support him.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart