Once described as a 'paramilitary in a necktie', Alvaro Uribe takesoffice as president of Colombia next week, writes Michael McCaughan.
When Colombian president-elect Alvaro Uribe announced his decision to run for office last year, the news was greeted with widespread derision.
Mr Uribe's record as a friend of right-wing paramilitaries, his links to the Ochoa drug-trafficking clan and the DEA's indictment of his closest adviser for importing chemicals vital to cocaine production made him an unlikely contender for head of state. Over the past year, however, the collapse of the peace process and the escalation of the internal conflict has driven the country into Mr Uribe's arms.
Mr Uribe (49) is a Harvard-trained lawyer whose father was shot dead by left-wing rebels. The former governor of Antioquia state successfully marketed himself as a political outsider even though he has worked inside the political system for the past 25 years.
Colombian voters gave Mr Uribe the strongest mandate of any president in recent history, even though record abstention meant that only one in four eligible voters cast a preference for him.
The paramilitaries enjoyed free rein in Antioquia when Mr Uribe was governor in the 1990s, their activities facilitated by Mr Uribe's "Convivir", a network of civilian defence groups which he now proposes to create nationwide.
These groups collaborated with paramilitary units, informing on suspected leftists and carrying out assassinations themselves.
Middle-class people who once dismissed Mr Uribe as "a paramilitary in a necktie" now make positive sounds about his ambition to "clean up" the country. Crucially Mr Uribe enjoys the backing of the Bush administration which hailed him as a model leader during his recent visit.
Colombia is now the third-largest recipient of US aid, after Egypt and Israel, a national security area of increasing importance. Under Plan Colombia, the US has stepped up involvement in the war against drugs and rebels but critics reject the project as a blatant attempt to increase US control in the hemisphere.
In the interim period between election and inauguration, Mr Uribe has revealed a shrewd ability to build cross-party alliances while earning kudos abroad for naming women to a record six cabinet posts, including the defence ministry.
On his first day in office, Mr Uribe will present his Referendum against Corruption and Petty Politicking, which would reduce Congress by half and eliminate a series of parliamentary privileges. He will offer armed rebels a ceasefire opportunity in return for renewing peace talks, an offer certain to be refused.
There is one cloud on the horizon, reminiscent of woes which accompanied former president Ernesto Samper (1994-98), who limped through office after tapes revealed he had received campaign contributions from known drug-traffickers.
According to DEA documents, 50,000 kg of potassium permanganate, a necessary chemical in the production of cocaine, were imported by a company owned by Mr Uribe's campaign chief, Mr Pedro Juan Moreno.
The unreported shipments could have produced half a million kg of cocaine with a street value of $15 billion. Potassium permanganate is not produced in South America, so whoever controls the chemical's market in Colombia controls the cocaine trade.
The DEA noted last year that Mr Moreno's company, GMP Chemical Products was the single largest importer of the chemical from 1994 to 1998, the same years that Mr Uribe was governor of Antioquia and Mr Moreno his chief of staff. A recent interview with Newsweek magazine was aggressively cut short when the reporter raised these issues.
Earlier this week, Colombia's National Drug Council revealed that imprisoned drug barons had recuperated property and cash confiscated by the judicial system, using bribes and threats, highlighting the fragile nature of the court system.
The reality of Colombia's armed conflict is that rebel groups thrive because there is zero tolerance for dissent which falls outside the liberal-conservative consensus.
Over the past 40 years, all independent social activism has been ruthlessly crushed as workers, trade unionists, lawyers and others are detained, tortured and killed for challenging the status quo.
The rebels' own struggle for social justice has deteriorated into a brutal turf war for coca profits and kidnap rewards, leaving little room for idealism. This week the rebels released their youngest kidnap victim, the three-year-old daughter of a rural mayor.
Mr Uribe inherits one of the most unequal nations in the world where 53 per cent of land is controlled by 1 per cent of Colombians and where 11 million people live on less than one dollar a day.
The internal war has displaced two million people, Colombia suffers 20 per cent unemployment while hundreds of businesses have substituted cash wages for food and petrol bonds.
Mr Uribe, on his official website, dreams of "a nation of property-owners" ruled by a creative and solidarity-minded middle-class. He won an important moral victory when he convinced the EU to add the FARC rebel group to its terror list in return for accepting the principle of international mediation in the armed conflict.
Mr Uribe's stock will score a major victory if he can disband right-wing paramilitaries who welcomed his election victory as a "slap in the face for leftist guerrillas".
The paramilitaries began life protecting landowners and drug-traffickers but quickly expanded their role to include the elimination of anyone considered soft on the rebels. They justified their existence by pointing to official abandonment of the countryside, pledging to dissolve themselves as soon as the state resumed its role as guardian of the peace.
Mr Uribe's national security plan, involving 100,000 professional soldiers and one million "amigos" or informers, will effectively absorb the paramilitaries into the security force apparatus.