November 5, 2007

Colombia’s Elections Highlight Democratic Shortcomings

by Garry Leech

While there were some signs of democratic advances in Colombia’s recent local elections, for the most part the electoral process again illustrated the weakness of formal electoral democracy in this war-torn nation. The October 28 local elections for governors, mayors and municipal posts were marred by violence as almost twice as many candidates were assassinated this year than during the 2003 campaign—twenty-nine candidates killed compared to 15 four years ago. Furthermore, the elections were plagued by vote buying, threats against voters, illegal campaign financing, government intimidation, massive disenfranchisement of citizens and outright fraud. According to election monitors from the Organization of American States (OAS), the electoral irregularities undermine democracy in Colombia.

On the positive side, left-of-center candidates successfully won several major offices throughout the country without getting assassinated in the process. Nevertheless, the role of the state and right-wing paramilitaries in the elections made evident that Colombia still has a long way to go before it can be considered, even by the narrowest of definitions, a functioning democracy.

President Alvaro Uribe personally and repeatedly intervened in the campaign for mayor of Bogotá by urging residents of the nation’s capital not to vote for a candidate allegedly supported by the country’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Despite Uribe’s urging, the center-left Democratic Pole’s candidate, Samuel Moreno, won a landslide victory over the president’s preferred choice. Meanwhile, the head of the Democratic Pole, Carlos Gaviria, responded to Uribe’s attempt to publicly link Moreno to the guerrillas by declaring: “That was not only unconstitutional, but beyond all norms of decency.”

The state also intervened in the elections by arresting opposition candidates including Moises Delgado, a member of the union SINTRAPAZ and a Democratic Pole candidate. Delgado was arrested on unspecified charges in Sumapaz, a community south of Bogotá, the day before the election. Isaac Paez López, the Democratic Pole candidate for mayor of the town of Cartagena del Chairá in Caquetá, was also arrested by state security forces two weeks before the election.

Meanwhile, the five right-wing pro-Uribe parties at the center of the para-politics scandal fielded more than 26,000 candidates throughout the country despite the fact that their leaders were in jail for allegedly collaborating with right-wing paramilitary death squads. Because they had yet to be convicted, these leaders were permitted to orchestrate the campaigns of their respective parties from behind bars. When the final votes were tallied, the five parties had won control of more than 20 percent of Colombia’s towns. Other candidates linked to the paramilitaries won the governorships of Sucre, Córdoba, Magdalena and Antioquia, suggesting that the militias remain a powerful political force in the north.

In some regions, candidates bought the votes that put them into office, according to an Inter Press Service report by Constanza Vieira. The ombudsman for the northwestern department of Chocó, Víctor Raúl Mosquera, noted that the going rate for a vote was $50. Mosquera claimed that all the parties were buying votes with the exception of the Democratic Pole. OAS election observers reported personally witnessing the purchasing of votes with both money and food. One OAS election observer went so far as to point out that “Colombia has the most backward electoral system in Latin America.”

The backwardness of Colombia’s electoral system was also made evident through other forms of clientelism. In one case, workers’ jobs were linked to their votes. The wealthy family of Jaime Murgas, a candidate for governor in Cesar, owns large agribusiness interests in that department. Employees reported to election observers that they were threatened with being fired if they did not vote for the family’s candidate.

Another part of the country experienced what appeared to be blatant electoral fraud. Early in the evening of October 28, the vote count for the gubernatorial race in the department of Sucre showed that Jorge Carlos Barraza, a candidate linked to the para-politics scandal, was losing by 2,000 votes. The Election Registry’s data transmission system then mysteriously broke down and officials ordered all observers to vacate the premises. When the system was restored, Barraza was in the lead by 200 votes. The same “malfunction” occurred in Sucre during the last congressional elections when Alvaro Garcia eventually proved victorious. García is currently in jail, charged with orchestrating killings carried out by paramilitaries.

Another illustration of the country’s flawed electoral process was the fact that many Colombians didn’t even have a vote to be manipulated or bought. According to the non-governmental group, the Human Rights and Displacement Consultancy (CODHES), more than 300,000 displaced people didn’t possess the necessary documents to participate in the elections. This massive disenfranchisement of eligible voters makes clear that the ongoing forced displacement of rural Colombians is seriously undermining democracy in the country.

Meanwhile, violence against candidates increased during the recent campaign in comparison to 2003. Even by the Colombian government’s own reckoning, approximately half of the 29 candidates assassinated were killed by right-wing paramilitaries—the rest were killed by leftist guerrillas, according to official sources. Furthermore, Colombia’s Public Advocates office stated that half of the country’s nearly 1,100 municipalities endured electoral violence or intimidation. Hardly conditions conducive to a viable electoral process.

The recent elections also revealed the flawed nature of opinion polling in Colombia. This was particularly evident in the Bogotá mayoral race. In the days leading up to the election, pollsters declared the race between Samuel Moreno and Enrique Peñalosa a dead heat. However, when the votes were counted, Moreno won by an impressive 16 percent margin—44 percent to 28 percent.

The most common methodology used by pollsters in Colombia is to contact urban residents by telephone. Naturally, this greatly increases the possibility that a disproportionate percentage of those polled will be members of the middle and upper classes. Consequently, in the Bogotá mayoral race, the polls favored Peñalosa. When a record number of voters turned out on October 28—many of them poor residents who had not been polled during the campaign—the flawed nature of the polls was made evident. Interestingly, the same polling methodology disproportionately favors President Uribe, which casts serious doubts on his alleged 70 percent approval rating.

Given the preponderance of violence against candidates, threats against voters, electoral fraud, vote buying, disenfranchisement, state interference and polling methods that favor certain candidates, it is not surprising that OAS election monitors questioned the legitimacy of Colombia’s democratic process. These observers were, however, only commenting on the country’s failure to achieve a respectable formal electoral democracy. If a deeper democratic process were to be considered—one that extended far beyond the act of voting and allowed for a truly participatory process that ensured social and economic equality for all citizens—then Colombia clearly would not be considered a democratic nation.

Back to Top . Comments