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Colombia leader Uribe close to Senate control: poll

Posted on: Sunday, 5 March 2006, 12:22 CST

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Allies of Colombia's conservative president, Alvaro Uribe, are close to seizing control of the Senate in elections March 12 and the president himself should win a second term in a vote in May, polls taken in February and published on Sunday said.

The intended vote for pro-Uribe parties, at 48.4 percent, falls short of an absolute majority, according to the poll by private company Datexto published in El Tiempo newspaper.

Precise results are difficult to call for Colombian legislative elections, due to complicated voting systems. Close U.S. ally Uribe, popular for tough policies against Marxist rebels, cannot currently count on permanent majorities in either of the two houses of Congress, although he has usually managed to negotiate approval of important legislation.

Uribe himself is attracting 48.6 percent support ahead of the presidential election May 28. With 15.3 percent of voters still undecided and another 6.2 percent saying they will not vote, this would probably translate into more than 50 percent for Uribe on election day, allowing him to win outright and avoid a second round runoff.

In second place was the candidate for Colombia's main opposition party, the Liberals, whose identity will only be announced this month. The Liberal candidate should attract 15.5 percent of the vote, according to the poll.

Support for Uribe was down from 62.4 percent in the last Datexto poll, in December. Datexto provided no polling results for the lower house Chamber of Representatives, because of the complexity of the voting system.

The polls of voting intentions of 1,200 people were taken from February 8-20, and have a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.

Source: REUTERS

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