Colombia's presidential election

Juan Manuel Santos (pictured) was elected as the heir to a popular incumbent. His hardest task will be correcting Álvaro Uribe’s excesses

Jun 24th 2010 | bogotá

THERE were no surprises this time. In the first round of Colombia’s presidential election on May 30th, Juan Manuel Santos, the former defence minister of the current president, Álvaro Uribe, took 47% of the vote—making fools of opinion pollsters who had him tied with Antanas Mockus, who got just 22%.
The run-off on June 20th duly turned into a formality: Mr Santos won 69% of the vote and will have a strong mandate once he becomes president on August 7th.

Mr Santos campaigned as the next-best thing to his popular predecessor, who was blocked by the constitution from running for a third term. In eight years, Mr Uribe transformed Colombia from a nearly failed state into a safer and more prosperous country. He crushed leftist guerrillas and demobilised right-wing paramilitaries, reducing violence and restoring business confidence. Mr Santos could claim some of the credit for these successes. He also promised to sustain economic growth, having served as both trade and finance minister in previous governments. Mr Mockus, a former mayor of Bogotá, has no experience of national office and was undone by gaffes.

Mr Santos said in his victory speech that his win was also Mr Uribe’s. He plans to keep his predecessor as a “permanent adviser”, although Mr Uribe may run for mayor of Bogotá. On paper, Mr Santos will have an easier time getting legislation through Congress than the outgoing president did: his coalition, led by Mr Uribe’s U Party, holds 73% of the lower house and 70% of the Senate. But thanks to Mr Uribe, Colombia now faces far different problems than it did in 2002. Indeed, some of the trickiest were of Mr Uribe’s own making.

Colombians elected Mr Santos above all to ensure that the FARC and ELN guerrillas, whom he battered as defence minister, do not recover. The insurgents tried to disrupt the vote by force, killing 10 policemen and soldiers on election day. Two days later, they paralysed public transport in the small town of Algeciras in western Colombia. But the effect was to show how much the threat they pose has diminished.

A greater risk to public safety comes from urban criminal gangs, many of them led by former paramilitary fighters demobilised by Mr Uribe. These groups focus on drug-trafficking, but are also thought to persecute trade unionists. As many as 40 labour leaders were killed last year. Mr Santos plans to train urban police squads to pursue the mobs, just as he helped develop army units for jungle combat.

Mr Uribe’s critics say the demobilisation scheme was part of a pattern of undermining the rule of law. His government was indeed regularly jolted by scandals, including illegal telephone tapping of the opposition, ties between paramilitaries and the president’s political allies, and even the murder of civilians by some army units to boost body counts.

Mr Santos has tried to address these concerns. Referring to Mr Mockus’s vows of honesty and legality, he said in his victory speech that “you and I share those banners.” He has already met top judges who refused to see Mr Uribe. However, his proposed judicial reform would harm prosecutors’ independence by giving the president control of the now semi-autonomous attorney-general. And his plan to bolster military courts may be aimed at removing civilian judges’ jurisdiction over cases of human-rights abuses by the army.

The battle for domestic security has also created foreign-policy headaches. Though far fewer labour activists are killed than in the past, America’s Congress has used the issue as an excuse not to ratify a free-trade deal with Colombia. And the government’s successes against the guerrillas have driven them to the borders with Venezuela and Ecuador. Mr Uribe accused his neighbours’ leftist governments of sheltering them. He bombed a FARC camp in Ecuador in 2008, and expressed outrage when Swedish weapons bought by the Venezuelan army reached the FARC. Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s populist president, “froze” relations with Colombia last year, and vowed to end all imports from its second-biggest trading partner after Mr Uribe granted the United States facilities at military bases.

Mr Santos has echoed Mr Uribe’s charges. But he is more worldly and conciliatory than his folksy, combative mentor. He has promised a foreign policy of “diplomacy, caution and respect”. Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, gave him a congratulatory call. But Venezuela said it would await friendly “gestures”. Mr Chávez campaigned against Mr Santos, and says he backed a coup against him in 2002.

At home Mr Santos faces a bankrupt health system, a persistent budget deficit and an unemployment rate of 12%, one of the highest in the region. He promises to balance the budget by 2014 without raising taxes, and to cut unemployment to single digits. He says this can be done by reforming health care and reducing transfers of oil and mining royalties to the provinces. He has been cagey about reforming archaic labour laws that condemn most Colombians to the informal economy. While security requires constant vigilance, it is a sign of how much Colombia has changed that Mr Santos may be judged primarily on his management of the economy.

The Americas