COLOMBIA: ALVARO URIBE WINS SECOND TERM AS PRESIDENT.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe won a second four-year term by a landslide in a May 28 vote marked by high abstention rates. It represented a solid consolidation of his power two months after parties allied to Uribe took a majority in the Congress (see NotiSur, 2006-03-31), but it also represented the first time a leftist candidate had a significant showing in a presidential election. Threats marred the electoral-campaign period, with one candidate dropping out claiming that he was being threatened and many reports of intimidation by paramilitary groups and increased attacks by rebel forces.
Second term for US ally after constitutional change
One might argue that Uribe won his re-election not on May 28 but in 2005 when he convinced the Congress and courts to approve changes to the Constitution that allowed the president of Colombia to seek a second term (see NotiSur, 2005-02-11, 2005-10-28, and 2005-12-02). Pre-election polls consistently showed Uribe would get the majority necessary to eliminate the need for a runoff election, though the numbers did not quite reflect his 62% win. Most polls foresaw his victory in the upper 50% range.
The vote made Uribe the first Colombian president to win a second term since the 1940s and the first to have a second consecutive term since Simon Bolivar ruled Gran Colombia (modern-day Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela) from 1831 to 1830.
The conservative Uribe beat his nearest rival by more than 40% with pledges to continue fighting crime and reducing poverty. In what, according to the Associated Press, was Colombia's least-violent election in more than a decade, Uribe won the landslide victory. His closest rival was Sen. Carlos Gaviria of the leftist Polo Democratico Alternativo (PDA) party. Washington's staunchest ally in Latin America will begin his second term on Aug. 7.
Gaviria wins most votes for a leftist candidate in history
Despite finishing far behind, Gaviria captured 22% of the vote, a record for the left in the historically conservative country and almost four times the group's numbers in 2002. Horacio Serpa of the centrist Partido Liberal (PL) trailed in third place with just below 12%. Former Bogota mayor Antanas Mockus ran under his own party banner and took just over 1% of the vote.
Former Cabinet minister Alvaro Leyva, who proposed a strategy to achieve a cease-fire in six months, bowed out of the race on May 18, complaining about receiving "intimidation" from authorities rather...
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