A Rough Road Awaits in Colombia

When Alvaro Uribe takes over as Colombia’s president today, 200,000 troops will be patrolling the nation’s streets. A U.S. spy plane will be circling overhead. And the oath of office will be administered behind closed doors.

This is the type of place Colombia has become. Even an act so important to a nation’s civic life as the president’s inauguration cannot take place in public for fear of violence.

More than ever, Colombia is a nation at war. The country’s internal conflict has sputtered along for nearly 40 years.

But as the U.S. continues to provide money, equipment and intelligence to Colombia’s government, the fighting threatens to engulf the country as never before.

The escalating conflict comes as Colombia’s economy is threatened by the shaky finances of Latin American giants Argentina and Brazil, and as Colombia’s Congress is under attack for rampant corruption.

Uribe, in short, needs to turn around the country’s military, political and financial structure. And he has to do it as the nation crumbles around him.

“It’s a high-wire exercise, but it has to be done,” Vice President-elect Francisco Santos said in an interview Tuesday, just 24 hours before his swearing-in.

“There are no miracles,” he added.

Santos said Uribe is committed to showing results as soon as possible. Uribe, a former state governor, has promised that within hours of taking office today, he will introduce a packet of political reforms to create a unicameral Congress, cut government pensions and increase executive power.

“Timing is crucial to get all the reforms in the first year,” said Santos, who was kidnapped by drug lord Pablo Escobar’s henchmen in 1990. “We know people will be disappointed if in one year, a year and a half, two years, they don’t see results.”

Still, many wonder whether Uribe plans to fight too many battles at once. Total support for the war effort will be a monumental task in a nation that has traditionally resisted all-out conflict.

“The most difficult problem for Uribe is to convince the country to pay the price for the war,” said Andres Jimenez, a journalist and political analyst. “Colombians are like people at a pole-climbing competition. They cheer the guy on the way up, but when he gets close to the top, they start throwing stones to knock him off.”

Uribe was elected in May with 53% of the vote, the first time since the country’s latest constitution was approved in 1991 that any candidate won in a first round of voting.

His victory was based largely on a promise to crack down on the guerrilla groups, especially the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which has about 17,000 troops.

More than anything, Uribe must find a way to protect the thousands of people killed, kidnapped or maimed each year by guerrillas--as well as by Colombia’s growing right-wing paramilitary groups. And he has to do it fast.

“The honeymoon is not going to last long,” said Daniel Garcia Pena, a former peace negotiator. “The question is how much [time] can he buy with the political capital he has.”

Uribe has proposed doubling the size of the police and armed forces to about 400,000 members.

He also wants to create a million-member citizens watch brigade to serve as military informants. And he wants to do away with the draft, increasing the number of professional soldiers.

Though these measures would go far in building on recent improvements to Colombia’s military achieved under outgoing President Andres Pastrana, there are political and financial problems.

First, such measures will take time--at least several years to field a fully trained new force of soldiers, according to military experts.

Second, they’ll take money, and Colombia is in desperately short supply. Uribe has said his proposals will cost $1 billion--about equal to 1% of the country’s gross domestic product. Unemployment remains high at 17%. Foreign capital and investment continue to flee.

To pay the bill, Uribe is set to propose a series of tax and financial reforms.

One proposal is for a flat sales tax of 15% on most goods and the closure of numerous tax loopholes.

He also has suggested war bonds and a restructuring of the country’s lending deals with the International Monetary Fund.

Santos said reforms and the crackdown on tax evaders could raise as much as $7 billion. Even then, he said, the country will still need support from the U.S.

Washington has supplied nearly $2 billion in training, military equipment and drug-eradication programs to Colombia in the last two years. But it has repeatedly vowed not to send ground troops.

“We’ll probably need a lot more training,” Santos said. “We’ll probably need a lot more mobility. We’ll probably need a lot more sophisticated weapons. And we’ll probably need more intelligence and communications. We’ll fight this war. We’re going to do our job. But we need help.”

Uribe’s most audacious reform proposal may be the political referendum he has promised to introduce today.

If approved--first by Congress and then by voters--it would allow Uribe to seize control of many budget functions, ostensibly to prevent pork-barrel spending. Most striking, it would allow him to put a vote directly to the people to dissolve Congress and hold elections.

The referendum, in effect, would greatly weaken the powers of the legislature. Its prospects remain unclear, even though Uribe supporters control both houses of Congress and have promised to pass the bill.

To read the interview with Colombia’s Vice President-elect Francisco Santos, go to latimes.com/colombia