Colombia's communist guerrillas announced an "armed strike" in several rural provinces effective from dawn yesterday cutting off vital transport and trade as Colombians braced themselves for an intense period of violence in the run-up to this Sunday's municipal elections.
The guerrillas have killed 36 candidates and forced 1,300 more to withdraw from the upcoming elections to replace mayors, governors and state officials. In the past two weeks alone, left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries killed 28 police officers while Colombia's new army chief, Gen Manuel Bonnet, narrowly escaped death after a bomb exploded behind his vehicle.
International observers began to arrive in Bogota this week to oversee the final days of the electoral process and witness events in the countryside, where frightened civilians continued to flee rural violence at a rate of 400 a day.
The elections will be an important test of the government's ability to maintain a democratic facade even as half the country is disputed by guerrillas, para militaries and drug-traffickers.
Colombia has been ruled for a century by liberals and conservatives when not under direct military rule. The abstention rate has reached 70 per cent in previous elections, disturbing evidence that most Colombians can find no good reason to cast a vote.
Colombia's leading daily, El Tiempo, described anyone brave enough to vote in the provinces as "somewhere between imprudent and insane" as a death threat hangs over would-be voters in areas of guerrilla influence.
"We will defeat them," said President Ernesto Samper this week, but his pledge to end the violence rang hollow as he worked flat out just to deal with the constant attacks on his discredited administration.
"Every year you think you've hit rock bottom, then next year somehow it always gets worse," Dr Luis Amaya, of Santa Fe hospital, in Bogota, said this week.
The latest unemployment figures fuelled the general desperation, showing the worst decline in job creation in 10 years, while 38 per cent of workers earn wages below the minimum needed for economic survival.
Meanwhile, election authorities faced a citizen rebellion in Mosquera, a small town near Bogota, where 2,400 voter credentials were mysteriously transferred to another district in a crude gerrymandering manoeuvre. "If we don't get action on this, we're calling a general strike," said one opposition activist.
The mood in Bogota, however, is far less tense than in the countryside. The only positive proposal for ending the violence has come from a liberal party presidential candidate, Mr Juan Manuel Santos, who called for the demilitarisation of a huge zone of guerrilla influence as a prelude to peace talks, a transitional government and a new constitution. The proposal has the support of the Nobel laureate, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
The army opposes any concessions to the rebels, and a former chief, Gen Harold Bedoya, described it as a "betrayal and a crime". Gen Bedoya was removed from his post as head of the army two months ago.
The current crisis began after secret tapes revealed that Mr Samper received $4.5 million in drug money to finance his 1994 election campaign. The roots of the long rebel war go way to the 1940s when liberals and conservatives fought a bitter battle for control of the country which cost 200,000 lives.
The guerrillas are led by Mr Manuel Marulanda (70), a veteran who was been fighting in the Colombian hills for half a century.