Pubdate: Mon, 29 May 2006
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2006 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact:  http://www.boston.com/globe/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Indira A.R. Lakshmanan
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Plan+Colombia
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Colombia

REBEL-FIGHTER URIBE REELECTED IN COLOMBIA

Colombia -- After suffering years of conflict at the hands of guerrillas,
militias, and drug traffickers, Colombians reelected President  Alvaro
Uribe yesterday by a landslide as a reward for dramatically reducing
violence and presiding over the strongest economic recovery in a decade.
The election was largely peaceful.

With 99 percent of the ballots counted, Uribe had 62 percent of the
vote, ensuring four more years for the Bush administration's most
loyal ally on a continent dominated by leftist  governments. At a time
when neighboring Andean countries are nationalizing  resources, the
53-year-old center-right Uribe has been Washington's biggest
collaborator in the war on drugs and the push for free trade in South
America. "Uribe got a much stronger mandate than four years ago --
he's won 1.5 million more votes than last time, and that's going to
give him a lot of room to maneuver," said Alejandro Vargas, a
political scientist at National University in Bogota.

But Uribe's challenges in a second term will be enormous: to vanquish
Latin America's last leftist insurgency, invest in social services,
build modern infrastructure to fuel trade and jobs, and eliminate
drugs in the world's top cocaine-producing nation.

Leftist Carlos Gaviria, 69, former chief of the constitutional court,
conceded to Uribe after finishing a distant second with an estimated
22 percent  of the votes.

Gaviria had campaigned on a platform of expanding investment in social
services to assist the nearly 50 percent of Colombians who live in
poverty. A major challenge for Uribe will be to expand public
education, housing subsidies, and health coverage for the poor, as
well as to help an estimated 2 million Colombians displaced by the
conflict return to their homes or make productive lives in cities.

This electoral season has been Colombia's least violent in 12 years,
and most voters credited the greater tranquility to the president's
boosting of military  and police forces in rural areas that were long
in the grip of vicious guerrillas or right-wing death squads.

Four years ago, residents in many parts of rural Colombia lived under
the constant menace of kidnapping, extortion, or forced recruitment by
militias who operated with impunity in areas with little state presence.

Yesterday in Guasca,  a small mountain town 35 miles northeast of
Bogota, military and police patrols  strolled casually through the
town's narrow streets, and all voters interviewed  said they cast
their ballots for Uribe because security was immeasurably better  than
before.

"In the 60 years I have been alive, he's the first president who has
done something for us," said Sandalio Zapata, a farmer who had donned
a thick wool poncho to come from his village to the town center to
vote. "Four years ago, the mayor and city council were constantly
being pressured by the FARC," he said, referring to the 17,000-strong
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which has been waging war
against the state for 42 years. Zapata's then-30-year-old son was
kidnapped by the Marxist FARC five years ago, he said, and he and his
wife had to scrounge a ransom before the guerrillas  would let their
son go.

With Uribe's 25 percent increase in security forces, a military post
was established in Guasca, forcing the guerrillas to retreat to more
remote regions, and allowing a return of tourism and commerce,
residents said. Marco Aurelio, a 53-year-old local butcher who would
not give his full name, said his family had been menaced by phone
calls several years ago from guerrillas who demanded that he purchase
500 malaria vaccines for the rebels, or they would kidnap his children.

Unable to buy the vaccines, he negotiated a price equivalent to
$13,000 and was forced to take a bank loan to pay the rebels. "That
kind of extortion has practically disappeared in this town," he said,
"and it's all thanks to Uribe giving us better security." In 2004,
Uribe signed a peace deal with the right-wing militias that were
formed in the 1980s by landowners to battle the guerrillas. The
demobilization of 30,000 paramilitary fighters, who were blamed for
some of the war's worst atrocities, substantially contributed to the
drop in violence. According to government figures, homicides have
dropped 23 percent since 2003, and kidnapping has fallen 62 percent.

Terrorist acts -- including car bombings, sabotage, and attacks on
pipelines, roads, and towns -- have fallen by more than half, from
1,257 in 2003 to 611 last year. Major Oscar Angel of the Tequendama
Infantry Unit that was patrolling Guasca's voting station at midday
said Cundinamarca Province, the region surrounding Bogota, is
unrecognizable compared with four years ago. In the past, ranchers
were frequently forced to give livestock and money to rebels, or see
their children forcibly recruited.

Mayors and town councils were often forced to turn over portions of
their budgets to the guerrillas, he added. But with the increase of
security forces under Uribe, he said, "local people are less
intimidated. Once they felt that the state was here to stay, they
began  to help us with information about where the guerrillas were
hiding." More than 220,000 security forces were deployed to nearly
10,000 polling stations across this country of 41 million people, from
Andean mountain towns and Amazon jungles to the Caribbean and  Pacific
coasts.

There were a few reports of attacks on police stations and  energy
towers and the kidnapping of some electoral judges in a remote region
by  the FARC. There were also two encounters in the past two days
between military  forces and illegal militias. A study by the Security
and Democracy Foundation, a think tank in Bogota, says campaign-season
killings are down more than 75 percent compared with the last
2001-2002 electoral period, when the FARC kidnapped presidential
candidate Ingrid Betancourt.

"One of the principal reasons is the presence of security forces in
150 municipalities where there were none in 2002," said Alfredo
Rangel, director of the foundation.

Under Uribe, he said, "authorities have broken the back of urban
guerrilla networks," and chased rebels deeper into the mountains and
jungles. Last year, Uribe's supporters in Congress passed a
constitutional amendment legalizing reelection, allowing him to become
the first president to serve two terms in Colombia in more than 100
years.

Not all people interviewed yesterday said they were happy with his
reelection. "I don't think they should have changed the constitution
to benefit  one person," said Martin Carrillo of La Calera, a mountain
town in the outskirts of Bogota that was once a frequent target of
guerrilla activity. "How come Uribe hasn't talked to the FARC?" he
said. "They have us by the throats, but he hasn't done anything to
make peace with them. To really solve the guerrilla problem, he needs
to help poor people, invest more in social welfare so the guerrillas
won't have any cause."
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