Jailings don't keep parties from power in Colombia (election today)

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Washington Post

Jailings don't keep parties from power in Colombia
Leaders tied to paramilitaries back candidates
By Juan Forero, Washington Post | October 28, 2007

BOGOTÁ - On the surface, the Democratic Colombia political party couldn't be in a worse position for today's local and regional elections.

The party's leader, Mario Uribe, a cousin of President Álvaro Uribe, resigned from the Senate to face charges that he collaborated with paramilitary death squads. Two other former senators are in jail, including one accused of planning an assault in which 16 peasants were killed with rocks and machetes.

In all, the party's entire four-man bloc in Congress has been purged, casualties of a yearlong scandal that has linked 42 lawmakers with paramilitary groups.

But that hasn't stopped Democratic Colombia, which has close ties to President Uribe. The party and four others whose leaders are either under arrest or under investigation for alleged links to the illegal groups are fielding 26,455 candidates in today's elections.






Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2007/10/28/jailings_dont_keep_parties_from_power_in_colombia/

[Judi Lynn]

1. Leftist leads in Colombia's capital as nation votes following violent campaign

Leftist leads in Colombia's capital as nation votes following violent campaign

The Associated Press
Saturday, October 27, 2007

BOGOTA, Colombia: A left-wing opposition party held a large advantage in the race for mayor of Colombia's capital Sunday after violence-marred regional campaigns across the nation.

While conservative President Alvaro Uribe remains widely popular, polls indicate that the party he defeated for the presidency last year may take the second most important elective post in the country — Bogota mayor.

Samuel Moreno, grandson of a military dictator, held a lead of 40 percent to 22 percent over independent former Mayor Enrique Penalosa, according to a poll published Saturday by the newspaper El Tiempo. The survey by the Datexco company had a margin of error of 2.7 percentage points.

Moreno's Alternative Democratic Pole already governs Bogota, but consecutive victories would be a boost for his party ahead of the 2010 presidential race. With nearly 7 million people, the capital is home to a sixth of Colombia's population.

More:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/28/america/LA-POL-Colombia-Election.php

[Robbien]

2. Is this just the AP saying a president is popular?

It is hard to imagine Uribe being popular in the polls.

Crossing fingers in hopes of the Liberal party getting elected over the jailbirds.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Hard to tell what they REALLY think, since Colombia has the worst record on killing journalists.

The ones who haven't fled from the country admit they "self-censor," in order to spare themselves a world of grief!



Also hoping Colombia gets a chance to crawl out from under the violent, facist, right-wing, death-squad loving, political machine.

Link on self-censorship among Colombian journalists:

MONTERIA, Colombia

he main suspect in Orlando Benítez’s murder was never in doubt. Benítez, a lawmaker here in the northwestern province of Córdoba, was preparing to run for mayor of a municipality controlled for years by Diego Murillo Bejarano, a paramilitary chief known as “Don Berna.” Murillo, once a close associate of drug lord Pablo Escobar, hadn’t given the campaign his blessing.

The local and national press reported briefly on a police announcement of the hit, in which five men gunned down Benítez, his sister, and his driver on April 10. But the press didn’t mention Murillo or subject the triple murder to any significant investigation. “No journalist tried to check into what everyone suspected,” says Gustavo Santiago, news director of the Caracol Radio affiliate in Montería, the provincial capital. “It could have cost you your life.”

It takes mettle to be a journalist in this Andean nation riven for decades by a war that pits government and paramilitary forces against leftist guerrillas, by international syndicates that enable Colombia to supply most of the world’s cocaine and much of its heroin, and by an array of underworld organizations that control contraband, extort from businesses, and manipulate public officials.

In this case, news outlets feared reprisals not only from Murillo, who insists he had nothing to do with the assassination, but from President Alvaro Uribe’s government, which had suspended arrest warrants for the warlord as part of negotiations to demobilize paramilitaries. The talks had dragged on for more than two years, lately in a paramilitary haven the government set up just a few miles from the murder. Naming Murillo as the suspect would have focused attention on violations of a “ceasefire” the paramilitaries declared for the talks. And it would have fueled international criticism of Uribe-backed legislation awarding judicial leniency to paramilitaries who disarm.

More:
http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2005/DA_fall05/colombia/colombia_DA_fall_05.html

[Robbien]

4. Not surprising then that there are so few stories in Google on this election

In a normal world there would be some word or other by now.