Local primary elections 'failure' due to low turnout: Minister (Colombia)

[Judi Lynn]

Local primary elections 'failure' due to low turnout: Minister
Sunday, 29 May 2011 21:05
Adriaan Alsema

According to Colombia's interior and justice minister, the primaries organized Sunday ahead of October's local and departmental elections turned out to be a "failure" after around noon only 10% of registered voters had turned up.

Minister German Vargas Lleras blamed the six political parties that took part in the primaries for the disappointing turnout. According to the minister, the parties had failed to promote the elections and reminded them elections had cost more than $38 million.

Vargas Lleras was supported by Registrar Carlos Ariel Sanchez, who called the turnout "disappointing." However, the registrar stressed that there had been no reports of public disorder.

In October, Colombia will hold local elections and vote new mayors, governors, members of council and deputies.

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/16597-local-primary-elections-failure-due-to-low-turnout-minister.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. What a contrast to the big voter turnouts in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and other countries

with honest, transparent voting systems where the poor majority has a chance to elect real representatives of the people--and have certainly done so!

I feel sorry for any honest election officials and workers, and civic and political groups, in Colombia, who may have tried hard and failed. They have an uphill battle in a country long controlled by the far right, transglobal corporations and war profiteers, and run basically as a criminal enterprise over the last decade, with U.S. support and $7 BILLION in U.S. "military aid." It must be very difficult to motivate voters.

[Bacchus39]

2. voting is mandatory in Ecuador, fines are imposed for those who don't vote

Bolivia is compulsory too. Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile the same. also this is was a primary and not a general election.

[gbscar]

3. This was an internal election to chose party candidates, not officials, for 271 municipalities

Therefore, your comparison would only make sense if you were to compare this primary election with others of exactly the same nature.

That is, a specific set of local primaries where voters have the option of selecting the "best" candidate within their own parties, before the regional or national elections actually take place.

Such internal party elections aren't common in Colombia to begin with, especially as a separate event from nationwide or regional elections.

This specific election was held outside of the regular electoral season and only in those 271 locations where certain parties decided to choose their own candidates in this manner as opposed to using other methods. It's the responsibility of the parties, not the state, to motivate their supporters to vote.

At first glance, it seems you're trying to directly compare this with the large turnouts for completely different types of elections, such as those recently held in Ecuador (for a national referendum in a country where citizens are legally obligated to vote, period). Which misses the entire point.

Then again, I don't remember you complaining or even acknowledging that Venezuela previously elected a National Assembly in 2005 with only ~25% of the vote when the opposition decided to abstain. That would also be a different context and a different kind of election too, of course, but it still shows "large turnouts" aren't as universal as you're making them seem.

Sure, you can certainly say this latest event doesn't reflect favorably on the health of Colombian politics, which is absolutely correct both for reasons you've mentioned and others you haven't, but ignoring that there are other factors involved doesn't help.

[Judi Lynn]

4. What normal person could feel motivated to go to vote in areas where the right-wing thugs

breathe down your neck in the voting booth, some of them even going INTO the voting boothes WITH the voters? Good god. Have heard about that for years.

"Mark Him on the Ballot - The One Wearing Glasses"
By Constanza Vieira

~snip~
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.

More:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42290

[gbscar]

5. Or, surely, when FARC threatens and kills candidates as part of their "complete sabotage" policy

But I don't know if you're heard that has been going on for years as well.

"Both killings and kidnappings are used against civilians to spread terror, a violation of Article 13 (2), which prohibits "acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population." In the months leading up to October 1997 municipal elections, FARC guerrillas killed, threatened, and kidnapped dozens of mayors, town council members, and candidates, who were told to resign or face death. Among the departments most pressured were Antioquia, Bolívar, Caquetá, Cundinamarca, Guaviare, Huila, Meta, Nariño, Putumayo, and Tolima.

The FARC threat was so determined, in fact, that the group felt obliged to issue a confirmation via the Internet. "The position of the FARC-EP in relation to the upcoming elections continues irrevocably to be the same: complete sabotage," which in practice consisted primarily of killing and threatening civilians who were candidates or outgoing officials."

http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,HRW,,COL,,3ae6a7e30,0.html

I assume that would also make normal people uncertain or fearful about going to vote, no?

And yes, the paramilitaries have also been killing candidates for years as well. Which is equally barbaric.

But I do find it ironic that the paragraph you just quoted -and another part of the article which you didn't- explicitly says many of the villagers had already decided to vote for Uribe on their own, even long before they were threatened or "invited" to do so by paramilitaries. Makes for interesting food for thought...well, at least for those who are hungry.

Personally, I hate to admit it, but even in such poverty-striken places there was/is a degree of popular sympathy for Uribe that wasn't imposed through a gun, which makes it far more dangerous in the long run.

But let's look at the bigger picture. If we were to talk about this subject with any degree of actual seriousness, that would require looking for the estimates and statistics regarding how much paramilitary pressure may have actually influenced past and present elections, particularly in terms of the affected regions and how many votes they may have "contributed" to both Uribe and other parapoliticians linked to him

There are couple of books by Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris that would be useful for this and other related purposes, if there was a desire to hold any debate or just satisfy one's intellectual curiosity.

And there are, just as well, additional reports and publications discussing wider electoral issues such as vote buying, clientelism and fraud, which are equally unhealthy for any political experience but perhaps far more influential than the direct armed pressure used by the paramilitaries or other armed actors.

Again, that depends on what rocks one wishes to look under and which ones are ignored. I prefer to pick up as many as possible.