COLOMBIA:Alvaro Uribe needs to convince the courts and congress before he seeks re-election, writes Patrick Markeyin Bogota
WITH HIS popularity soaring and once-powerful rebels at their weakest in years, Colombian president Alvaro Uribe is considering an unprecedented third term and looks untouchable should he decide to run in 2010.
The conservative US ally is credited by many with rescuing Colombia from chaos and his approval ratings stand at around 90 per cent.
But convincing congress and the courts to clear the constitutional reform needed for a re-election would be complicated, while talk of extending Uribe's rule raises protests from some who say it would be a threat to democracy.
Uribe remains evasive. He says he wants new leaders, but he has not yet picked a successor. Most analysts believe he is trying to keep his enemies guessing and allow himself room to manoeuvre in his term's remaining two years.
"The nation's politics and even economic dynamism will revolve around this process, and depend in good measure on its outcome," El Tiempo daily said in an editorial. "It is marked by the great unanswered question: Does Uribe want to or not?"
Uribe was re-elected in 2006 after one constitutional amendment. Now supporters have handed in five million signatures for a referendum on another reform to allow a third successive term. The proposal must pass through four debates in congress and a review by Colombia's constitutional court before any referendum could be held, most likely in the second half of next year.
During his six years in office, Uribe's popularity has grown as the country's long conflict has ebbed.
The Farc rebel group has been beaten back after Uribe ploughed billions of dollars in US aid into sending troops to retake control of large areas of the country. Bombings and kidnappings have fallen, and investment has rocketed.
His already high popularity got a huge lift in July with the rescue of a group of hostages, including French-Colombian Ingrid Betancourt and three US contract workers, who had been held by rebels for years in jungle camps.
But critics worry that this will translate into a re-election riding roughshod over institutions. Some see authoritarian tendencies in Uribe's open clashes with the supreme court.
"A new Uribe re-election, independent of how you qualify his government . . . puts Uribe up there with other Latin American autocrats," Juan Fernando Cristo, of the Liberal party, said.
Even Wall Street and some in Colombia's business community are wary of another Uribe term, but they still see that as better than an alternative who does not deliver on his policies.
Uribe has a majority in the congress to try to push the re-election proposal. But the legislature is mired in a scandal linking around 60 lawmakers - many government allies - to paramilitary death squads accused of atrocities before they disarmed in a peace deal.
The Conservative and Radical Change parties now allied to Uribe may also push for their own presidential candidates, and the opposition Liberal and Democratic Pole parties are in fledgling talks over an alliance to face Uribe, lawmakers say.
"There is a lot of uncertainty about what will happen with the process in congress," said Marta Lucia Ramirez, a member of Uribe's party who opposes an immediate third term, but would back him if he went again in 2014.
Should Uribe step aside for 2010, the field remains wide open, with no single candidate establishing a lead so far. But ex-hostage Betancourt could be an election wild card. On her release the former presidential candidate said Uribe should be allowed to run, but she also pondered a bid.
"If it means serving Colombia and that is the way, why not?" she said in Paris where she was recovering from captivity. "But I don't want that to become an obsession."
- (Reuters)