Marxist Rebel Group Competes in Colombian Election

Marxist guerrillas openly competed in Colombian elections for the first time Sunday under a peace pact with the Conservative Party government of President Belisario Betancur.

The voting--for this South American nation’s Congress, provincial assemblies and municipal councils--was being closely watched as a bellwether for presidential elections due in less than three months. Most returns will not be tabulated until today.

Although the guerrilla-sponsored Patriotic Union is expected to win only a small fraction of the vote, its participation is a landmark in Colombian peace efforts and political development.

Power Lines Toppled

Some guerrilla groups not taking part in the elections carried out hostile actions Sunday. In northern Cordoba province, rebels attacked a police station in one town, wounding six policemen, and stole ballot boxes in another town. In southwestern Cauca province, a guerrilla bomb toppled an electric tower, leaving several towns without electricity.

Colombia, Latin America’s fourth most populous country with 29 million people, boasts one of region’s best records of democratic rule. During most of this century, it has been governed by elected civilian presidents from the traditional Liberal or Conservative parties.

Sunday’s voting may indicate which of three main candidates--two Liberals and a Conservative--has the best chance of winning this year’s presidential contest, scheduled May 25.

The dark horse among the three is Luis Carlos Galan, 43, a renegade Liberal who leads a faction called New Liberalism. The official Liberal Party candidate is Virgilio Barco, 66, leader of the mainstream Liberal Convergence faction.

Barred From Reelection

Alvaro Gomez, 66, is the ruling Conservative Party’s candidate. Incumbent Betancur is constitutionally barred from seeking reelection.

With tallies from less than 2% of the polling places Sunday night, the Liberal Party appeared to be taking an early lead. It had 49% of the votes for the Senate and 54% for the Chamber of Representatives. The Conservatives had 35% of votes for the Senate and 32% for the chamber.

New Liberalism was off to a slow start, with 9.3% for the Senate and 8.6% for the chamber, while the Patriotic Union lagged with 1.3% for the Senate and 2.4% for the chamber. A scattering of votes was cast for minor candidates.

The initial tallies were too sketchy to indicate a trend.

After Betancur took office in 1982, he began peace negotiations with several leftist guerrilla organizations. His announced goal was to coax the rebels into the country’s political system.

What Colombians call the “peace process” has had its ups and downs. A peace agreement between Betancur and one of the major guerrilla groups, the April 19 Movement, known as M-19, fell apart last June.

Some guerrilla groups are still fighting in the rugged Andean countryside. Among them is M-19, which seized the Colombian Supreme Court headquarters last November in an operation that left 100 people dead, including 12 justices of the court and 41 guerrillas.

Rebels Try Peaceful Politics

But the Moscow-oriented Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the largest and oldest guerrilla organization, is giving peaceful politics a try. Known by the Spanish initials FARC, it renewed its peace agreement with the government a week before Sunday’s elections.

Last March, this group formed the Patriotic Union, which also includes the Colombian Communist Party and other small Marxist groups. Some of the Patriotic Union’s candidates in Sunday’s elections have been active guerrillas.

Jacobo Arenas, a top leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, was the Patriotic Union’s presidential candidate until January. The Revolutionary Armed Forces said that Arenas withdrew because of death threats against him. Jaime Pardo Leal, 46, a former judge, is now the union’s presidential candidate.

Alvaro Salazar, a Revolutionary Armed Forces commander and a member of the Patriotic Union’s national committee, said scores of FARC members and sympathizers have been assassinated in the last year by the army and paramilitary death squads.

That is one reason why the guerrillas have not yet agreed to break up their mountain camps and give up their arms.

Guerrillas in Truce

“The FARC continues to preserve its status as a guerrilla organization in truce,” Salazar said in an interview.

The peace agreement calls for changes in Colombia’s poverty-ridden social structure and correction of flaws in its democratic system. Salazar said the guerrillas are disappointed that little progress has been made in reforms but hope that the next administration can be persuaded to move faster.

He said the Patriotic Union expects to win 10 to 15 seats in the bicameral Congress. Other Colombian politicians say those expectations are exaggerated, but few predict that the leftists will be shut out.

“It will be the first time in the history of Colombia that a guerrilla organization in truce has its representatives in the Congress of the republic,” Salazar said.

The current Congress includes two Marxist representatives, one a Socialist senator and the other a Communist member of the Chamber of Representatives.

Liberals Hold Majority

Liberals hold the majority in both houses. Many analysts say they would have won the presidency in 1982 if Galan and his New Liberalism faction had not split the Liberal Party vote.

Galan’s 746,000 votes that year, combined with former Liberal President Alfonso Lopez Michelsen’s 2.8 million votes, would have outnumbered Betancur’s 3.2 million votes by nearly 350,000 votes.

Liberal Party leaders fear that the same kind of split could cost their party this year’s presidential elections.

Sunday’s election results will provide an indicator of the relative strength of the three main forces. If it appears that the Conservatives have the votes to win easily in May against two Liberal presidential candidates, some political analysts say, the Liberal Party and Galan’s New Liberalism may try to combine their strength behind a compromise candidate.

Galan, however, insists that he will not withdraw from the presidential race. He says his goal is to reform the Liberal Party, to transform it from a political machine that runs on patronage to a popular movement.

“I am not betraying Liberalism, I am combatting a machine that is decadent and corrupt,” he said in an interview.