Violence, Fraud and Elections:Voting Under the Gun in Colombia

[Judi Lynn]

March 25, 2010

Violence, Fraud and Elections
Voting Under the Gun in Colombia
By LAURA CARLSEN

Colombia’s congressional elections on March 14 were hailed by the United Nations as the most peaceful in years. The victory of the coalition led by President Alvaro Uribe suggests an easy win for his party in the presidential elections scheduled for May 30.

But celebrating the absence of bombings at polling centers or assassinations of candidates — both common in the past — implies that in a situation of conflict the bar for democracy is lowered to near-ground level. Nothing could be more dangerous — for Colombia or for democracy itself.

The results of Colombia’s elections raise serious doubts about the quality of that country’s democracy, especially in the light of past and present violence. The Electoral Observation Mission reported that 35 candidates elected to the 102-seat senate are direct heir-apparents to congress-members identified by the courts as linked to paramilitary groups.

Widespread dirty tricks reported during the pre-electoral period include vote-buying, voter intimidation, disenfranchisement of vulnerable populations such as the displaced, threats to opposition candidates, and illicit funding of campaigns.

Although the bulk of media attention has focused on snafus in the counting and reporting process (official results are still not available), the real crisis of legitimacy lies in the broken chain between a voter’s free choice of representation and the real ways that candidates come to power.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/carlsen03252010.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. Bookmarking for future reference when our corpo-fascist press and their trumpeters here at DU

claim that a narco-thug politician in Colombia, like Uribe, is "wildly popular." Somebody comes to your door in Colombia to ask you if you approve of Uribe and you don't know if they're a pollster or a paramilitary operative about to put a bullet through your head, what are you going to answer? You go to vote and you have paramilitaries looking over your shoulder at the polling place and pointing to the candidate on the ballot that you must vote for, how are you going to vote?

TENS OF THOUSANDS of political leftists, union leaders, human rights workers, community activists, teachers, peasant farmers and others have been murdered in Colombia with near total impunity for the murderers. Nearly HALF of the union leaders murdered in Colombia have been murdered by the Colombian military itself, and the other half by their closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads--according to Amnesty International. That in itself is enough to END democracy, for everybody knows that if you have the "wrong" political views you might well be killed for it.

A mass grave with up to 2,000 bodies was recently found in La Macarena, Colombia, with grave dates (but no names) of 2005 through 2009, which local people say are the bodies of 'disappeared' local community activists. How much of a damper do you think that would put on political discussion and "free elections" in the La Macarena region and throughout Colombia?

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The La Macarena massacre (includes a description of, and links to docs about, U.S. ops in La Macarena)
http://www.cipcol.org/?p=1303

The UK military connection
http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/2010/02/04/silence-on-british-army-link-to-colombian-mass-grave/

[Wilms]

2. Thanks n/t