A Model for Colombia

Noemi Sanin will not be a candidate in Colombia’s June 21 presidential election, but her endorsement, and the support of the nearly 3 million voters who marked their ballots for her in last Sunday’s first round, surely will be the key to victory for one of the two surviving candidates.

Whatever the outcome, this troubled country is not having another round of politics as usual. Drawing a surprising one-third of the vote, Sanin, an independent, provided an electoral wake-up. She was pitted against candidates of the two traditional political machines, the Liberal and the Conservative parties, which have dominated Colombian politics for almost a century.

Sanin had a solid record as foreign minister in the Cabinet of President Cesar Gaviria, but that alone would not have lifted her to the political heights. Some voters were impressed with her dramatic decision to resign as ambassador to Britain when the scandal of drug lords’ contributions to Ernesto Samper’s presidential campaign to succeed Gaviria was made public. But most likely what touched the right chord was her persuasive campaign against the irrational violence that is destroying the country.

The large number of Colombians who went to the polls Sunday demonstrates a resurgence of the democratic process in a land whose future looks far from bright. Whoever wins in the contest between Liberal Horacio Serpa and Conservative Andres Pastrana should listen to the followers of Sanin.

That goes for Washington too. To improve its neighborhood in the Americas, the United States should do more to bolster the efforts of leaders like Sanin to turn Colombia around, end its 40-year-long guerrilla war and break the brutal hold of the drug cartels.