“More of the same” election results in Colombia
Bogotá, June 21st (IPS) – The former Colombian Minister of Defence Juan Manuel Santos was elected president with only a 30% of the eligible voters on the electoral rolls while abstention percentages surpassed a 55% in this South American country living in a state of internal war since 1964.
However, Santos won 69, 6% of the votes cast on Sunday 20th, during the second round of the presidential elections. With this result the current official model prevailing since 2002 has been consolidated.
More than 9 million Colombian citizens supported Santos, surpassing the number of voters who re-elected the current right-wing Alvaro Uribe in 2006.
“These are the best results ever achieved by a candidate in our history, and I receive it with humility and gratitude”- declared Santos in his victory speech. “If we have come this far, it is because we are prepared and because we are standing on giant’s shoulders” – he added by quoting Isaac Newton, even if the phrase is considered to belong to the British philosopher Bernard of Chartres.
The official candidates’ entire sum of votes in the first round was also surpassed by Santos, and this will be complemented with the control or adhesion of 80 percent of Congress, whom obeyed his call to a “national unity government”.
The poll’s foregone results, the World Cup and the pouring rain on Election Day, increased the traditional level of abstention to 55, 5%, higher than 50,76 of the first round and also higher than the average of 52,17 maintained since 1958.
A 27, 52 percent of the voters supported former Bogota Mayor Antanas Mockus (Green Party, PV), who refused to negotiate with the left in the second round to achieve political support and instead he proposed a “citizen alliance”.
His volume of voters increased in little more than 460.000 in relation to the 3.588.183 voters who supported him during the first round in May.
Mockus announced the independence of the PV in relation to the new government: “we will offer our support to those whom we consider good, after an exchange of arguments free of pressure”, he stated when acknowledging his defeat.
The 1.329.512 votes (9, 15 percent) achieved by the left-wing and opposing Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA) during the first round, mostly abstained on Sunday, and to a lesser extent the blank vote predominated after the instruction of the party for not voting for either candidate.
The number of blank votes was scarce, however, they doubled from 1, 54 during first round to 3,41.
On Sunday, incidents were reported with nine officers of the security forces killed near Norte de Santander, a North-eastern province, where skirmishes took place near Catatumbo Region, in the border of Venezuela.
Guerrilla promoted abstention and managed to hinder the work of public transport in the Southern Provinces of Caquetá and Putumayo. In Nariño, South-western provinces, the electricity network and Trasandino oil pipeline were damaged.
Referring to the major rebel group, the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), Santos expressed: “I repeat to the FARC that time has run out for them….Colombians know very well that I know how to fight them”
The elected Vice- President will be the former union leader Angelino Garzón, ex communist and ex Governor of the Western “Del Valle” Province. “He is a champion of human rights, of the defence of workers”, said Santos about him.
Seven defenders of human rights and rural leaders were murdered in May. Four of them were demanding the restitution of their land, occupied by far-right paramilitary forces, accused of the most brutal crimes committed in the last 20 years in Colombia.
Furthermore, between May and the first week of June more than 100 rural, labour, of human rights, women’s and black and indigenous movement organisations received death threats.
In his speech, Santos “did not mention neither paramilitaries nor the victims, declared Ivan Cepeda, spokesman of the Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE).
“There was neither one single word about peace, nor any mention about a negotiated solution to the conflict, in an attitude of continuism”, stated Cepeda to IPS, elected-congressman for PDA. Santos invitation was more a call to be unanimous than rather a call for national unity”, he said.
“If he truly seeks respect for Judicial Power autonomy, he should eliminate his proposal to annex the National Attorneys General Office to the Executive Power”, warned Cepeda in relation to Santos announcement.
This month, Uribe proposed to expand the prerogatives of the military courts, which do not have jurisdiction in cases of human rights violations. The elected President proposes, in accordance with the outgoing president, a justice reform.
Cepeda highlighted that this reform “must not include any limitations to the achievements in relation to human rights violations and crimes against humanity, including massive extrajudicial killings”.
Santos “will have to respond to the country in relation to his role in the execution of 2279 people presumably in the hands of the public force” while he was Defence Minister (2006-2009) that are under the prosecution’s investigation” the Movice spokesman added.
In the last few days, intimidatory threats against the Mothers of Soacha, who demand justice for the murder of their sons, passed off as guerrilla soldiers killed in combat during Santos’ mandate as Defence Minister, were intensified.
Constanza Vieira
Source: IPS http://www.ipsnoticias.net/nota.asp?idnews=95712