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CIAO DATE: 04/03
Colombia Alert: Colombia Elects a New Congress: Democracy under Stress
Phillip McLean *
Hemisphere Focus: 2001-2002
March 15, 2002
Overview
Faith in the Ballot Box
With all the headlines about violence, forgetting that Colombia has been among the most consistently democratic countries in this hemisphere is easy. On March 10, more than 10 million Colombians went to the polls to fill all of the seats in the national senate and the chamber of representatives. They will return to the polls May 26 to choose a president. If none of the seven inscribed presidential candidate wins 50 percent of the vote that day, voters will return again three weeks later to choose between the front-runners.
At this point, the country seems headed for a clear departure from historic voting patterns. A candidate calling for confrontation with leftist guerrillas, former governor Alvaro Uribe, holds a commanding lead in the latest opinion polls (62 percent versus 25 percent for his closest competitor, Horácio Serpa) and could win the presidency with only one round of voting. Those congressional candidates voicing support for Uribe appear to have made the most significant gains. Yet, with the uncertainties Colombia faces, the picture is anything but clear.
Despite a Troubled Political System
Colombians are going to the polls this year in an atmosphere of increasing violence, weakened parties, and accusations of corruption and economic dissatisfaction. Recent governments have tried but failed to negotiate peace, curb official criminality, and improve living standards. That failure has generated renewed demands for more institutional experimentation. A review of the congressional election of March 10 illustrates the stress the political system is experiencing.
Dealing with Violence
Pervasive violence has long distorted campaigning in Colombia. Candidates must trim their debate and the media their reporting. That sense of insecurity has further increased, especially since February 20 when President Andres Pastrana ended his three-year effort to bring the largest dissident force, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) to the negotiating table. To balance those fears, the government mounted an impressive nation-wide operation by the police, military, and election officials to protect the democratic process. Although 400 of the country’s 1,024 municipalities are said to be under some degree of guerrilla or paramilitary control, voters at only 15 polling stations were completely disenfranchised. Voter abstention does seem to have risen in conflicted rural areas of Valle and Antioquia, but across the nation participation was comparable to other recent congressional races, and the total number of votes cast was somewhat higher.
Confused Choices
Where once Colombians were fiercely loyal to just two political parties, Liberal and Conservative, they now face a confusing array of campaign labels. Constitutional changes in 1991 made forming nonparty movements or running as an independent easy. This reform has largely destroyed the power of the traditional party bosses and opened space for previously underrepresented views. Indigenous communities have gained representation. Particularly noteworthy this year, leftists and populist candidates won high vote totals in the Senate contest by gathering support widely from around the country.
The danger is that the new senators and representatives will see little need to legislate together and the coalitions that do emerge may be hidden from public view. The Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), the major paramilitary group, claims-however dubiously-that it will have 90 representatives in the new congress. A full third of the new congress was elected outside the official banners of the two traditional parties. Even those who ran as Liberals and Conservatives are allying themselves with little regard to party labels of the presidential candidates. Uribe, running as a “Liberal dissident” and having established himself as the firmest opponent of the guerrillas, has been the main beneficiary of these crossovers. That benefit may help elect him, but once elected he will have little sway over a highly individualistic congress.
Diluted Suffrage
Another effect of the 1991 opening of the electoral process is that more candidates are entering the race for a set number of seats (100 for the senate, 164 for the chamber). Under the country’s proportional representation/weak party system, senators and representatives are being elected with small vote totals. Most votes, in fact, are cast for people with no chance of winning office. Moreover, successful candidates will come to the new congress when it gathers in July with unequal mandates. The senator with the highest vote (former OAS ambassador Luis Alfredo Ramos, an Uribe backer with Conservative roots) will take his seat with more than five times the support received by his colleague with the least votes. In the chamber, the representative with the highest vote in each department will typically have received three times the vote of the least.
Accusations of Corruption
Repeated scandals plagued the outgoing congress. The most pervasive accusation was that the congress with all its privileges and special favors had come to be the single most expensive government activity. More specifically, prosecutors (fiscales) were bringing new charges of malfeasance against congressional leaders even as the election was getting underway. They also published lists of candidates they had under investigation. As the candidates launched their campaigns, the government watchdog (procurador) announced he was proactively investigating the source of their financing.
Plus a Stalled Economy
At its recent annual meeting, the Inter-American Development Bank released a study saying that in the last 10 years, per capita income of Colombians had hardly grown at all and the rate of poverty remains the same. The average Colombian has felt these realities most painfully in the historically high rates of unemployment in recent years (circa 20 percent). To the continual amazement of outsiders, until Uribe began to ride the wave of worry about guerrillas late last year, Colombians regularly told opinion pollsters their most acute concern was unemployment, not insecurity, despite the rising violence.
Although Colombia is experiencing a growing sense of crisis, its democratic tradition survives. Yet the encouraging level of political participation has not pointed the way to clear solutions to the country’s mounting challenges. Voters seem to expect that the presidential candidates will show the way in their debates during the coming weeks.
Endnotes
Note *: Phillip McLean is a senior associate at the Americas Program at CSIS. A retired Foreign Service officer, McLean is former deputy assistant secretary of state for South America. He has served in Europe and four countries in Latin America including Colombia. Back.
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