COLOMBIA: ALVARO URIBE INAUGURATED FOR SECOND TERM AS PRESIDENT.
On Aug. 7 Alvaro Uribe was inaugurated for a second four-year term as president of Colombia after winning the May election by a landslide (see NotiSur, 2006-06-09). He became the first Colombian executive to gain a second term in many decades, thanks to a constitutional change from a friendly Congress and judicial system (see NotiSur, 2005-02-11, 2005-10-28 and 2005-12-02). Increasing attacks by the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) marked the days leading up to and following Uribe's second swearing-in ceremony, even as Uribe said he would open the possibility of negotiating with the rebel group. In the weeks following his swearing-in, the president announced privatization initiatives in the state-owned petroleum company and the national social security system.
Violence marks days preceding inauguration
While Uribe can look forward to a friendly majority in the Congress (see NotiSur, 2006-03-31), the FARC appeared to ramp up hostilities against Colombia's military in the days ending Uribe's first term. Attacks in Bogota, Catatumbo, and Narino prior to Aug. 1 left 18 military personnel and one civilian dead, with Bogota daily newspaper El Tiempo saying that the attacks reflected the FARC's intent to aim at military targets.
This is a historical pattern for the rebel group, argue journalists, pointing to the destruction of a military base in Uribe, Meta, and an anti-narcotics base in Miraflores, Guaviare, before the swearing-in of ex-President Andres Pastrana (1998-2002) in August 1998 (see NotiSur, 1998-08-14). On Aug. 7, 2002, before Uribe's first inauguration, rockets were fired at the presidential palace Casa de Narino, the Congress, and a military base, killing at least 20 people (see NotiSur, 2002-08-30 and 2002-09-20). The period also saw an increase in kidnappings as a strategy to increase the number of "exchangeables," hostages the FARC hoped to trade for imprisoned rebels.
The FARC sought to prove that a four-year offensive by Uribe's troops had not diminished their numbers or their resolve to overthrow the government, said Alejo Vargas, a political science professor at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogota. "Historically, rebels have carried out attacks leading up to and during presidential inaugurations," said Vargas. "It's their way of saying, 'You've lost your time trying to defeat us.'"
El Tiempo compared the July and August attacks on military targets with attacks that took place in May, when the new Congress was about to take over. Then the victims were primarily civilian. Analyst Alfredo Rangel said, "What the FARC might be planning, paradoxically, is a violent repositioning with a view toward an eventual restarting of dialogue with the government."
Reading the tactical tea leaves, Colombian analysts conjectured that the focus on military targets reflected the pre-Pastrana attacks of 1998 when the possibility of peace talks was also in the air. Jorge Restrepo of the Centro de Recursos para el Analisis de Conflictos (CERAC) said the rebels were still able to inflict casualties on troops being transported, although they were unable to concentrate large numbers of combatants without exposing themselves to military disaster, a shift from the previous decade.
The week of violence before the ceremony saw six people killed when a car bomb exploded outside a police station in the western provincial capital of Cali.
Uribe wants peace, makes promises
President Uribe began his unprecedented...
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