Colombia Polling Appears to Bolster President

Voters in Colombia went to the polls Sunday to elect both houses of Congress, and early returns showed overwhelming support for candidates aligned with popular pro-U.S. President Alvaro Uribe, who faces reelection in May.

Sunday’s election was the first test of electoral reforms designed to reduce the number of parties and make the country more governable. But for many, the election’s real test was of Uribe’s popularity, and early indications were that the president won a resounding vote of approval.

With 60% of ballots counted, candidates affiliated with the seven parties tied to Uribe were on the way to winning as many as two-thirds of 102 Senate seats, and a solid majority among the 166 seats in the lower House of Representatives, said Alejo Vargas, director of the political science department at Bogota’s National University.

Although leftist guerrillas had tried to disrupt the elections with a campaign of killings, transit stoppages and strikes, no major incidents of violence were reported Sunday. Tens of thousands of Colombian soldiers were deployed at polling places across the country to safeguard the balloting.

“Undoubtedly this is a triumph for Uribe and his followers,” Vargas said.

Uribe, who is expected to win a second four-year term, needs congressional support for a host of controversial initiatives. He will push for ratification of a free trade agreement with the United States, tax reform, increased health and education spending and cutbacks in pensions and other entitlements.

The President will also seek to maintain the pressure on leftist guerrillas and drug traffickers, a battle for which Colombia has received about $4 billion in U.S. aid since 2000.

Uribe is credited with improving security in this country, which has endured four decades of civil war. Killings, kidnappings and massacres are down and observers give the president credit for a strong economy whose output grew more than 5% last year. That popularity enabled him to push through a constitutional amendment abolishing a one-term limit on presidential administrations, enabling him to run again.

“People see Uribe as a hard worker, great communicator and someone who gets results,” said Rafael Nieto, a former vice minister of Interior and Justice and now a Bogota-based political consultant.

But Uribe has been criticized for being too soft on right-wing paramilitaries, which have shrunk as 20,000 members have laid down their arms since 2003. His advocacy of a free trade agreement with the United States, for which negotiations were completed last month, has also come under fire. For those reasons, some analysts expected the opposition to post stronger results, especially Liberal Party candidates in the Senate.

Candidates sanctioned by right-wing paramilitaries were expected to add to their already considerable clout in Congress. Between 20% and 35% of all senators and Congress members are thought to have close ties to the militias.

“The paramilitaries certainly won’t lose any ground and they will probably gain some,” said political scientist Claudia Lopez.

Voter abstention was higher in regions such as this rural area in Huila department, or state, where the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials FARC, has used violence to inhibit voting. The FARC’s goal is to smash Uribe’s image as successful at waging war on the guerrillas.

In a coldblooded massacre thought to have been carried out by FARC guerrillas, nine of Rivera’s 11 City Council members were killed Feb. 27 as they met at a local hotel. All had been threatened with death in November unless they resigned their posts, a demand common in the FARC’s zones of influence. Rivera’s previous mayor, Luis Humberto Trujillo Arias, was killed in 2004 by unknown assailants.

For three weeks the FARC has tried to enforce a public transit stoppage by burning vehicles. Stretches of the main highway south of Huila state capital Neiva were virtually devoid of cars and buses Sunday.

But although Sunday’s voter turnout in Rivera, a town of 18,000, was 20% less than normal, it was better than many expected given last month’s massacre, said a local government official.

“Voting today was not just an act of heroism but one of homage to the nine councilors,” Mayor Hernando Pinto Salazar said in a telephone interview during the polling.

“We have to elect the best people we can to manage the government,” said a 42-year-old farmer named Eduardo as he emerged from the voting booths at a local elementary school. He refused to give his full name for fear of reprisal from the FARC. “But everyone is afraid. It’s unavoidable.”