UPDATE: Chaos in Colombia mushrooming

[rabs]

There is so much developing that it is dizzying:

-- There was a meeting today presided by lame-duck Uribe in which a proposal was introduced calling for ELECTRONIC machine voting in the May 30 presidential election. The plan calls for the importation of 10,000 electronic voting machines. Paper ballots were used in this past Sunday's elections.

-- This proposal is directly connected to the massive confusion over the results of Sunday's elections for the Senate, Chamber of Deputies and presidential candidates for the Conservative and Green parties.

-- Tuesday night, vote tabulation was halted. The company in charge of the tallying said the necessary software was missing. If the software is not up and running by 9 a.m. today (Thursday), the counting will be suspended until guarantees are given that an honest count can continue.

-- The results for the winners in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies are up in the air; many declared winners on Sunday night are now not certain of having a seat in Congress.

-- Uribe's interior minister, Fabio Valencia Cossio, tonight said Colombia had entered into a "hecatomb" because of the electoral disaster but he did not elaborate on what he meant by that scary word. He said it three times in a radio interview.

-- The fight between Uribe and the head of the National Registar's Office, which is responsible for counting votes, continued with Uribe again accusing the head registar of being drunk on Sunday night. The registar has denied it and said the electronic voting tabulation had been sabotaged. He said yesterday "dark forces" were trying to remove him before the presidential election.

-- Juan Manuel Santos appeared in the news; he has chosen as his campaign manager a sinister politico named Rodrigo Rivera Salazar, who was aspiring to be the presidential candidate for the PIN party, the party of narco-traffickers and paramilitaries mentioned in other threads.

-- Santos said he would be on a "spiritual retreat" for the next few days to plan strategy for his campaign.

Stay tuned !!!

[Judi Lynn]

1. Went to see Rivera's image, and he looks completely creepy.

Having him in the room with Juan Manuel Santos would be more slime than any honest people could tolerate.

http://static2.elespectador.com.nyud.net:8090/files/images/091be98afb649bed04010e2c80772915.jpg http://www.radiomundial.com.ve.nyud.net:8090/yvke/files/img_noticia/t_juan_manuel_santos_37047_146.jpg

Jesus Christ!

http://3.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_Fk3v8_L0j2s/SGowE2pbfKI/AAAAAAAABPY/PWEIBziajKo/s400/vomiting-man.jpg

[Judi Lynn]

2. Tiny article on P.I.N.

Death squad claims BOGOTA
March 18, 2010

A new political party accused of having links to right-wing death squads has gained political ground in Colombia's congressional elections, raising concerns that ties between corrupt politicians and armed gangs remain strong.
Since 2006, prosecutors have investigated more than 80 lawmakers in Congress, charging half and placing the others under investigation for collaborating with death squad militias that killed thousands in the country's shadowy war.

The newly created Party of National Integration won eight of 102 Senate seats up for grabs in Sunday's election. Its candidates have come under suspicion of having collaborated with armed bands.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/death-squad-claims-20100317-qfka.html

[rabs]

3. Santos' running mate

Foto: Fernando Ruiz Nieto / Partido de la U -- Few days ago JM Santos picked this guy as his vice presidential running mate in the May 30 elections.

It was a surprise to many in Colombia. Angelino Garzón according to story below is a former union leader, former Labor Minister in the Pastrana government and former governor of Valle department. He resigned a few days ago as Colombian ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva to accept Santos' offer.

Analysts (unnamed but cited in the article) say Garzón's choice is a political ploy by Santos to pick up votes from labor, leftists, union organizations and obreros (workers).

(Fat Chance, and I think the dirty laundry on this guy will come out soon.)

---------------------------

El candidato a la presidencia de Colombia por la coalición de Gobierno, Juan Manuel Santos, nombró el martes a Angelino Garzón, un antiguo dirigente sindical que se desempeñó como embajador ante Naciones Unidas, como su fórmula a la vicepresidencia.

Garzón, además de dirigente obrero, fue ministro de Trabajo de la administración del ex presidente Andrés Pastrana -quien gobernó entre 1998 y 2002- y posteriormente fue elegido por un movimiento político independiente como gobernador del departamento del Valle.

More, Spanish

http://www.noticias24.com/actualidad/noticia/146936/santos-sorprende-con-su-candidato-a-vicepresidente-angelino-garzon/

[protocol rv]

4. Update from the Financial Times on March 16th

"Uribe’s party leads in Colombia elections
By Naomi Mapstone in Lima

Published: March 16 2010 00:39 | Last updated: March 16 2010 00:39

Juan Manuel Santos, the former Colombian defence minister who oversaw the rescue of kidnapped politician Ingrid Betancourt from guerrilla hands, has boosted his bid for the presidency with a strong showing in Sunday’s Congressional elections.

Mr Santos’s “U” Party secured 27 seats while the Conservative Party won 23 seats in the 102-seat Senate, with 93.77 per cent of votes counted on Monday. The Liberal Party, lead by Rafael Pardo, remained the biggest single opposition force, with 18 Senate seats"

--------

My take? I think Colombians are backing the right wing because they fear a leftist will turn out to be a Chavez in disguise. They also seem to like the increased security and reduced crime rate as the FARC is defeated.

Unfortunately, all of these "solutions" are transitory unless the USA begins to legalize drug use. As long as the US finances both sides of the civil war (the drug users finance the FARC, the US government finances the Colombian military), there's going to be no real peace.

[rabs]

5. Still no results in Conservative Party voting

that will be key for continuing, or NOT, uribismo for another four years.


BOGOTA (AFP) –
Unidentified hackers struck the computerized system used to transmit voting data in Colombia's legislative elections, disrupting the vote count, the private contractor responsible for the system charged Wednesday.


Ivan Ribon, spokesman for Arolen, a company hired to transmit results of Sunday's voting over the Internet, told local media Wednesday that hackers struck at the moment polls closed at 2100 GMT.

"Early reviews show that there were 75,000 hits a second, which does not happen even on the busiest sites in the world," Ribon told RCN radio.

http://www.bahubindu.com/Hackers-attacked-Colombian-vote-count-22381268846094/

[Judi Lynn]

6. This is so crazy! They should have simply used their time worn method

of sending the paras to supervise the polling stations, even going into the booths when they don't trust the voter.

Great closing for your linked article:

President Alvaro Uribe has complained that while the armed forces risk their lives to protect Colombia's democracy, the electoral board has "serious" trouble simply reporting on it.

Conservatives were on track to keep their majority in Colombia's congress, early results showed Monday, as US ally Uribe's government complained the count's slow pace undercut the vote's credibility.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: