“The most boring elections in Colombian politics are the presidential elections.”
Sitting in her office on the forth floor of a high rise office building overlooking downtown Bogota, Alejandra Barrios Cabrera pontificated on the upcoming poll. The national director of Colombia's Electoral Observation Mission (Mision de Observacion Electoral) believed that her organization, a non-partisan group dedicated to protecting political voice and ensuring free and fair elections had better things to do with with their time and resources than to observe what was largely seen as a foregone conclusion.
As I walked the rainy streets of Bogota today on election day Sunday June 20th, her words couldn't have seemed more apropos. Despite the abundance of wetness provided by the rain, Colombia has been completely dry since Friday, thanks to the nationwide ban on all alcohol sales until the Monday morning following the election. The atmosphere on the relatively empty streets was extremely subdued, the regularly lively streets seemed dead. The heightened police presence was felt, however, as I passed through a checkpoint before entering La Plaza Bolivar in front of the Supreme Court and Congress. Presumably there to either protect the electorate, or suppress opposition, depending on your point of view, officers seemed to outnumber voters on this day of “free and fair” elections in South America's oldest democracy.
As a part of my journey to Colombia on an exchange between the Colombian national teachers union (FECODE- Federacion Colombiana de Educadores) and the American Federation of Teachers, I was excited to see democracy in action in a nation whose internal politics have seemed infinitely complex to a novice such as myself. Prior to my arrival five days before the presidential poll I had exhausted the mainstream English language press for analysis of the upcoming election. In early May, before the first round of voting (the equivalent of our primaries), according to the New York Times the Green Party candidate Antanas Mockus, a former Mayor of Bogota known for his unorthodox antics and a staunch stance on ending Colombia's patronage system and state-wide corruption was leading in the polls. The first round of voting on May 30th, however, ended with very different results, as Juan Manuel Santos, the successor to current president Alvaro Uribe received well over
double the votes of Mockus, the only other challenger with significant support. Despite being part of an administration plagued by scandals and accusations of war crimes, Santos proved to be a political force too immense for the opposition parties. His road to the presidency was smoothly paved in what would appear, ostensibly, to be an approval of the policies of the Uribe administration.The past 8 years in Colombia have welcomed a new era. On one hand, due to a take no prisoners military policy the FARC (a Marxist guerilla group that has been engaged in an armed conflict with the state over the past fifty years) has been pushed to the margins of the country and has dwindled both in membership and in their effects on greater Colombian society. Combined with the austere implementation of neo-liberal economic policies, an increase in American aid and a dramatic increase in military spending, Uribe has strengthened ties with the United States at the expense of Colombia's relations with its neighbors.
According to many of the people I have met, however, the era of Uribe has been anything but prosperous. Attacks on organized labor have continued unabated, as well as the forced displacement of thousands of people living in proximity to mineral resources, oil and points of embarkation for drug traffickers. Colombia's unemployment, which has decreased, still hovers at around 12%. Colombia still maintains South America's highest inequality in terms of distribution of wealth as well. Despite demobilization efforts right wing Para-Military groups continue to operate with impunity and have a significant impact on both national and local politics.
Santos, a close of associate of President Uribe has been implicated in several actions that appear to undermine the rule of law. One of the recent scandals is referred to here as the “falsos positivos” (false positives). Under Uribe's administration the military was put on a performance based structure with incentives provided for killing larger numbers of members of armed rebel groups. This led in turn to soldiers luring innocent victims far away from the slums into rural areas with promises of job opportunities, murdering them, and dressing them up in FARC clothing. According to some estimates I have heard, these extra judicial killings have reached as many as 3000. While 30 military officials have resigned since the scandal was publicized in late 2008, there have been no prosecutions to date. Santos has been the minister of defense since 2006. During his tenure he has also been criticized for a military operation in which the Colombian army crossed the border into Ecuador to assassinate a former FARC leader who had been a peace negotiator. This action greatly destabilized the entire region for a period in 2008.
By the time the polls closed at 4 pm today it was apparent that Anatanas Mockus had failed to capitalize on what many, including myself, viewed as the glaring deficiencies in the incumbent party candidate. As I watched the counting of the election results on the flat screen TV in a comfortable middle class apartment in central Bogota there was about as much suspense as there had been while watching Brazil route Ivory Coast in a World Cup match earlier in the day. The entire nation's votes, as well as all votes cast by Colombians living abroad were counted in the span of only one hour. In the final analysis, over 55% of Colombians had abstained from voting. Santos won with a majority of 69% of the vote, to Mockus' 27.5%. When phrased another way, Santos received less than one vote for every registered voter in the country. After the election results were finalized as I prepared to leave, my host Jairo Arenas, a union official in charge of communications for FECODE sighed, “The education and health sectors are going to suffer the most.” The dark clouds filling the sky over Bogota appeared to be a sign of the mood of many Colombians as they reconciled with the reality of the coming Santos presidency.
Leon Sultan
Bogota, Colombia
June 20, 2010
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*Photos by author
For more on the “False Positives” scandal:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB266/index.htm
For more on the raid in Ecuador:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/03/05/oas.colombia/index.html
Unemployment statistics:
http://www.indexmundi.com/colombia/unemployment_rate.html
Election Results:
http://www.registraduria.gov.co/resultados/
Colombian Teacher's Union:
http://www.fecode.edu.co/
