Colombian leader Uribe allowed to run for new term

By Jason Webb

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) – Colombia’s Constitutional
Court cleared the way on Friday for right-wing President Alvaro
Uribe, popular for tough policies against Marxist rebels, to
run for a second term in May’s election.

The green light for Uribe, who is Washington’s closest
Latin American ally, came when the court voted 7-2 to approve a
law meant to prevent incumbents abusing their powers to unfair
electoral advantage.

Without the Electoral Guarantees Law, Uribe could have been
barred from contesting the election, which early polls predict
he would win by a landslide.

Uribe, who has secured a steep decline in violence and
kidnapping since he took office in 2002, has a 70 percent
approval rating.

The Constitutional Court last month approved a
constitutional amendment allowing presidents to serve more than
one four-year term, and politicians and analysts had widely
assumed it would give Uribe the final electoral go-ahead.

“The Constitutional Court today declared the statute
Electoral Guarantees Law constitutional,” the court’s
president, Manuel Jose Cepeda, told a news conference.

Critics of allowing presidents to seek a second term have
said they feared it would erode the checks and balances of
Colombia’s constitution and point to unhappy experiences in
other Latin American countries such as Peru and Argentina.

Colombia’s inspector general — a senior lawyer responsible
for ensuring the government acts legally — had recommended the
court bar Uribe from running in May. But analysts said
unelected judges would be loathe to stand in the way of the
country’s most popular politician.

Uribe has boosted defense spending and ordered the military
to be more aggressive against rebels fighting a 4-decade-old
war for socialist revolution. The country’s highways, long a
happy hunting ground for kidnappers, have become much safer.

DEMOBILIZING PARAMILITARIES

Assisted by hundreds of millions of dollars a year in U.S.
aid, Uribe has also stepped up spraying of crops used to make
cocaine and increased extraditions of drug traffickers to the
United States.

He has begun talks to demobilize illegal far-right
paramilitaries, who traffic in cocaine and have killed
thousands of civilians in a dirty war against the rebels,
sometimes in cooperation with sectors of the military.

The economy has also improved under Uribe, as companies and
ordinary Colombians feel more confident about spending in a
country long rocked by bombs and killings.

Uribe will officially announce whether he is running for a
second term by a November 27 deadline, said Interior Minister
Sabas Pretelt.

But the president’s intention is, especially after the
frantic political activity by his allies to get Congress to
pass the constitutional amendment to allow him to run again.

While he is extremely popular in high-income groups, many
poorer Colombians, who bear the brunt of the country’s
violence, also back Uribe.

“I hope Uribe wins next year’s election,” said Ricardo
Carrero, 37, who was picking up tin cans and paper scraps from
a Bogota street and putting them in a home-made wheelbarrow to
sell, “He is the only one who has been able to reduce the
violence in this country. He is our future.”

While the Constitutional Court opened the way for a second
consecutive Uribe bid for office, it ruled no public officials
other than the president could take part in elections.

(Additional reporting by Alonso Soto, Nelson Bocanegra and
Javier Mozzo)