We know better, have been hearing of paras in/near/around the voting centers for YEARS. Here's one very clear example:
"Mark Him on the Ballot - The One Wearing Glasses"
By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, May 8 , 2008 (IPS) - "With Uribe, we thought: this is the guy who is going to change the country," the 41-year-old fisherwoman told IPS.
That is why her fishing and farming village of 800 people in the central Colombian region of Magdalena Medio decided overwhelmingly to vote for current President Álvaro Uribe in the 2002 presidential elections, when he first ran.
The woman agreed to talk to IPS on the condition that she be asked neither her name (we will call her "L.") nor the name of her village.
The main city in the fertile region of Magdalena Medio is Barrancabermeja, an oil port on the Magdalena River, which runs across Colombia from south to north before emptying into the Caribbean Sea.
What convinced the villagers to vote for Uribe? "Because the region where we live is poor, very poor, it’s so difficult to find work, and when I heard him say ‘I am going to work for the poor, I am going to help them,’ I thought ‘this is a good president’."
When the rightwing president’s first four-year term came to an end in 2006, most of the villagers decided again to vote for him, reasoning that he just needed more time to reduce poverty.
The odd thing was that in both the 2002 and 2006 elections, despite the fact that the villagers had already decided to vote for Uribe, the far-right paramilitaries, who had committed a number of murders since 1998, when they appeared in the region that was previously dominated by the leftwing guerrillas, pressured the local residents to vote for Uribe anyway.
The paramilitaries did not kill people to pressure the rest to vote for Uribe, as they did in other communities, but merely used "threats," said L.
"If you don't vote for Uribe, you know what the consequences will be," the villagers were told ominously.
And on election day, they breathed down voters’ necks: "This is the candidate you’re going to vote for. You’re going to put your mark by this one. The one wearing glasses," they would say, pointing to Uribe’s photo on the ballot, L. recalled.
"One (of the paramilitaries) was on the precinct board, another one was standing next to the table, and another was a little way off, all of them watching to see if you voted for Uribe," she added, referring to the less than subtle way that the death squads commanded by drug traffickers and allies of the army ensured that L.’s village voted en masse for the current president in both elections.
"We form part of a municipality where there is corruption, from the mayor to town councillors, the police, the army and the justice officials - in a word, everyone. They are just one single corrupt mass. So what are you supposed to do?" said L., who added that the paramilitaries "control everything."
More:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42290~~~~~Vote-Buying and Front Men
By Javier Darío Restrepo*
BOGOTÁ, Mar 16, 2010 (IPS) - During Sunday's legislative elections in Colombia - in which rightwing President Álvaro Uribe's allies were the big winners - polling stations in one-third of the country's municipalities were at risk of violence, corruption or fraud, according to the ombudsman's office and election observers, who reported vote-buying and pressure on voters.
Some of the public were also alarmed at the appearance of the National Integration Party (PIN), a reincarnation of the National Democratic Alliance (ADN) party, which was banned by the electoral court due to irregularities.
The organisers of the controversial ADN are in prison or under investigation for their ties to the far-right paramilitary militias, which are accused of heavy involvement in the drug trade as well as appalling human rights abuses in this South American country that has been in the grip of an armed conflict since 1964.
The legislative polls drew attention worldwide not only because they were seen as an indication of voter intention for the May elections - in which Uribe would have won a third term hands down, according to opinion polls, if the courts had not thwarted attempts last month to modify the constitution to allow him to stand again - but also because of scandals that have surrounded Congress for years.
As an editorial in the El Espectador newspaper put it, "Over the last eight years, Congress has been caught up in the worst crisis in its history."
~snip~
According to government spokespersons, the elections were the smoothest and calmest in 30 years.
But foreign observers reported that vote-buying and fraud was as bad as, or worse than, in the last elections. They also denounced undue pressure on voters, such as the threat of blocking poor voters' access to health care if they did not cast their ballots for a given candidate.
When the election results began to trickle in, there were celebrations in a number of prison cells in Colombia. Álvaro García, a former senator sentenced last month to 40 years in prison for ordering a 2000 massacre of 15 peasants in the northern town of Macayepo, made sure he will continue to be active in politics in his region through his sister Teresita García, who was elected to Congress Sunday.
Other newly elected legislators are the wife of a former governor who was sentenced to seven years in prison; the son of an imprisoned lottery businesswoman charged with murder and money laundering; the political partner of a congressman; and the cousin of a former senator who is on trial.
In short, the two parties with the largest number of legislators in prison or facing prosecution were the big winners Sunday.
More:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50686
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