Colombian Government on Brink of Collapse

President Ernesto Samper’s government teetered on the brink of collapse Friday as students marched through the streets of the capital, three Cabinet ministers resigned and business leaders signed an open letter, all demanding that he step aside because of mounting evidence that drug money financed his 1994 political campaign.

The Colombian peso, which had stabilized late last year, has lost nearly 4% of its value since Jan. 1 with a deepening political crisis caused by high-level accusations that Samper is tied to drug lords.

The latest downward spiral began Monday, when Samper’s campaign manager, Fernando Botero, reversed himself and confirmed campaign treasurer Santiago Medina’s accusations that Samper knew the Cali drug cartel contributed millions of dollars to his campaign.

Testimony from another campaign official and from a former Cali drug cartel accountant, Guillermo Pallomari, had previously backed up other aspects of Medina’s statements.

“The circle is tightening around him [Samper],” said a source close to the investigation that originally uncovered evidence of drug money in the presidential campaign.

Samper has repeatedly denied the accusations.

“My conscience is clear about the financial management of my campaign,” he said in a speech Tuesday night.

However, polls by respected media this week found that at least twice as many of those questioned believe Botero as believe Samper.

For the first time, polls showed that, by a narrow margin, more respondents want Samper to resign than want him to stay.

“I will not resign,” Samper said Tuesday. “To resign would be an act of cowardice that neither Colombians nor my own children would pardon.”

But analysts question Samper’s reasoning.

“It is incredible, beyond all comprehension and defies logic that President Samper believes he can continue to govern the country,” wrote leading political columnist Enrique Santos Calderon in the Bogota newspaper El Tiempo, which tends to favor Samper’s Liberal Party.

“Either the president suffers from severe alienation from reality, or he has decided, coolly and calculatedly, to hang on to power at any price. Even if he sinks the country with him.”

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In a country where students seldom demonstrate outside university campuses and business leaders usually support the government unquestioningly, such outspoken opposition is the latest indication of a changing political climate, analysts said.

Colombians are increasingly intolerant of corruption. The attorney general, the comptroller general, 20 congressional representatives and the leader of the nation’s most popular salsa band are all under investigation for involvement with drug traffickers.

Despite Samper’s insistence that he wants Colombia to remain united, the scandal has split this nation.

A poll by the nightly television news program CM& found that Colombians are sharply divided over Samper’s proposal for a referendum on whether he should resign, with 53% opposed to the vote. The vote would cost $20 million, according to the government, and take two to three months to organize, analysts predict.

“At a time when the dominant sentiment is division in the Colombian family, a vote of this type would create a confrontation like a civil war,” said former President Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, whom Samper has called his political mentor.

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The country’s political structure has already splintered. The opposition Social Conservative Party, which has shared power with the president’s Liberal Party since 1958, broke with Samper and ordered its members to resign from his government.

In a further split, several dozen Conservatives publicly opposed the decision, and one of the three Conservative Cabinet members refused to quit.

Samper has lost the backing of key elements of his own party. One-third of the party’s nine-member National Executive Committee called for him to resign.

Health Minister Augusto Galan, brother of the leading 1989 presidential candidate slain by the Cali drug cartel, quit immediately after Botero’s statement was made public. Colombia’s ambassadors to the Netherlands, Venezuela and Argentina also quit, along with the heads of five independent government agencies.

Officially, unions and the armed forces support the president. But privately, senior military officers say the president should resign for the good of the country.

Business leaders tried to offer Samper a graceful way out, suggesting that he take a leave to concentrate on his defense.

By continuing in office, Samper virtually assures that the U.S. government will not certify Colombia’s drug-fighting efforts to qualify the country for trade preferences and U.S. support for international loans, analysts predicted.

“Decertification is a fact in Washington today,” said Noemi Sanin, a former ambassador who was among the first to resign from the Samper administration. “I do not believe that is the social program that President Samper wants for the country.”

Darling is a Times staff writer, Ambrus a special correspondent.