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Fw: What they won't tell you about Colombia's Elections May 31, 2002
- To: <latina@peacelink.it>
- Subject: Fw: What they won't tell you about Colombia's Elections May 31, 2002
- From: "Nello Margiotta" <animarg@tin.it>
- Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 11:29:25 +0200
ZNet Commentary
What they won't tell you about Colombia's Elections May 31, 2002
By Hector Mondragon
In the midst of all the euphoria in ruling circles over the triumph of
Alvaro
Uribe Velez in the Colombian presidential elections, there are certain
issues
that are not being discussed, even though they have everything to do with
the
elections.
The first is the high electoral abstention: the right-wing candidate was
elected
by 53% of those who voted, but 53% of the citizenry didn't vote. In Arauca
and
Caqueta abstention was 75%, in Putumayo 70%, and let's not forget Guaviare
where
they had to cancel the elections in half the municipalities, with 80%
abstention. In the former demilitarized zone, there was 95% abstention.
But if in these zones the cause of abstention could be violence, the same
can't
be said of the populous and urbanized department of the Atlantic, with
Barranquilla, the fourth largest city of the country, that had 65%
abstention.
Nor do they remember, any more, the tremendous electoral fraud committed
during
the congressional elections of March 8, whose final result is still unknown
even
3 months later. 42% of the polling stations had irregularities, sometimes
for
substitutions or subtractions and more often because the names of the
electors
didn't coincide with their voter ID.
Other forms of fraud on March 8: payments to senate candidates for
reelection by
means of the 'co-financing' funds of the central government intended for
territorial entities-- in this way, clientilism was paid for in the name of
decentralization.
In the end paramilitaries 'selected' 35% of the senators who today sit in
the
Senate despite the denunciations of the assassinated the archbishop of Cali
against the presence of narco-dollars in supporting certain candidates.
Nobody
wants to put this information out into the main media, especially the
international media, because that would endanger our image as 'the oldest
democracy in Latin America', not to mention endangering international
support
for the war we have been promised by the triumphant war candidate.
Nor will they tell you about the massacre of May 22 in 'Comuna 13' in
Medellin,
four days before the presidential elections. Nine civilians, four of whom
were
children, were killed when the Army, Police, State Police, and DAS attacked
the
neighbourhoods of La Independencia, El Salado, El Seis and Nuevos
Conquistadores. They were supposedly fighting guerrilla militias, but it
was
civilians who got the worst of it, including children who were returning
from
school.
They will talk about the massacre at Bojaya, but only as the responsibility
of
the guerrilla, because the only crimes that are mentionable are those of
the
guerrilla-- never the state. The state is not going to include itself on
its own
list of terrorists.
The media have silenced more than ever the daily assassinations against
popular
leaders. The day before the presidential election a councillor of El Tambo
(Cauca) of Via Alterna, a movement that forms part of the 'Polo
Democratico'
that was the electoral coalition of left-wing presidential candidate Lucho
Garzon. Niether the national nor the international television channels said
a
word.
The visit of Otto Reich to the president elect has been announced with
great
fanfare. The media are announcing it as a great honour to a public who
doesn't
know Reich's past, a past that is even more dirty than Uribe's own. These
are
items they can discuss with one another and with the Venezuelan
coup-plotter
Pedro Carmona who has recently arrived in Colombia. Presumably none of this
will
have any effect on Colombia's relations with Venezuela.
Until May 28 there was an attempt to be discrete about the economic future
of
the country under Uribe. Under the president-elect's program of theft known
as
'100 points', prudence has been thrown to the winds and the real actors
have
come out. The principal is the ex-Home Minister and cardinal of Colombian
neoliberalism, Rudolf Hommes. The familiar agenda: structural adjustment,
firing
of state employees, privatization, dismantling of labour laws and
protections.
Surrounding Hommes are advisors from the agricultural sector, the same
advisors
who set the national agricultural system adrift under the Gaviria
government,
> the same advisors who oppose any land reform that would redistribute the
highly
concentrated land-holdings.
They propose opening what remains to transnational agri-business under a
neo-corporatist system with partial state participation. They pontificate
against subsidies and protections of agriculture practiced in Venezuela or
by
small enterprises and communities in Colombia, but have nothing to say
about the
subsidies of agriculture in the US, nor do they show any reluctance for
state
support of the owners of the great banana and african palm plantations.
Nobody voted for the politices of Hommes: not even the right-wing
electorate of
Uribe who gave a blank cheque to the candidate in a system that has a
genius for
choosing the worst candidate every four years. If Hommes had campaigned
with
Uribe, the election might have been different-- perhaps it would have been
more
like the municipal election when Hommes lost spectacularly in his bid for
mayor
of Bogota.
As they look around, the patrons of the president-elect will no doubt hear
the
warning of Standard and Poor's: "Uribe's honeymoon will be short", they
said,
because of the economic situation, the growing external debt, the high
unemployment and the structural adjustment.
S & P suggested reforming the retirement pensions system, and immediately
Home
Minister Santos, from the family of the vice-president-elect, presented a
new
bill. The bill was protested by the Labour Minister and mobilizations by
oil
workers who have begun rotating strikes against the bill. It seems the
honeymoon
is over, before it even started.
Hector Mondragon is an economist and activist in Colombia.