After decades of being stigmatized by violent Marxist rebels and targeted by right-wing assassins, Colombia’s left broke through in Sunday’s election to become the country’s main opposition force.
Having denounced the guerrilla armies loathed by most Colombians, Carlos Gaviria of the Polo Democratico party got 22 percent of the vote with his anti-free-trade message and promises of more social spending, replacing the once mighty center-left Liberal Party as the main opposition.
President Alvaro Uribe, a Washington ally who glided into a second term with 62 percent of Sunday’s vote, has enough clout in Congress to enact a free trade deal with the United States and fiscal reforms clamored for by Wall Street.
“But the emergence of the Polo marks a massive change in Colombian politics, and no one really knows where it is going to lead,” said Mauricio Romero, an analyst at Bogota’s Rosario University.
Shifting political landscape
Thanks in part to the crime reduction that has made Uribe the most popular Colombian president in memory, the Polo’s growing base is largely unthreatened by right-wing militias that a decade ago greeted leftist politicians with gunfire.
Politics here was dominated for almost two centuries by Liberals and Conservatives. That ended in 2002 when Uribe, who bolted from the Liberals to run a one-man campaign, won the presidency with heavy support from the Conservatives, who still back him.
“Conservatism has been subsumed by Uribe and the Liberal party is dying,” Antonio Navarro, a left-wing senator and former member of the M-19 guerrilla group told Reuters. “We are the alternative going forward.”
M-19 negotiated a deal to disarm in 1989, allowing its members to reenter civilian life and help write a new Colombian constitution in 1991.
During that period the leftist Patriotic Union, a party linked with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, started winning mayoralties and other local posts.
Unwilling to see the radical left make such headway, paramilitary militias, sometimes with help from the army and police, gunned down at least 3,000 Patriotic Union members.
“What had killed the left was not only the brutality of the right but the fact that it never clearly distanced itself from the FARC,” said Bogota-based political analyst Miguel Silva. “But the Polo has clearly rejected the rebels.”
Crackdown on paramilitaries
Uribe is a hero to many for his military crackdown on the FARC and for cutting crime in the cities where most Colombians live. He points to the demobilization of more than 30,000 paramilitaries as a major achievement of his first term.
Thousands of civilians are still cut down in the crossfire every year between rebels and paramilitaries fighting for control of Colombia’s multibillion-dollar cocaine trade while tens of thousands are forced to flee their homes in poverty-stricken rural areas.
Uribe says the key to economic development is for the army and police to retake the countryside from these illegal groups. The Polo says he is not investing enough in health and other services for the growing number of displaced families.
Another boost to Colombia’s left has been the successful administration of Bogota Mayor Luis Garzon, who may carry the Polo’s banner in 2010’s presidential election.
“The near disappearance of the Liberal and Conservative parties puts the spotlight on the Polo, which now appears to be free to practice politics free of threats of violence,” Rosario University’s Romero said.