COLOMBIA:Colombian president Alvaro Uribe said he wants a rerun of the 2006 presidential election in which he won a second term, after the Supreme Court ruled late on Thursday that the vote was tainted by corruption.
The judges found that a former legislator was bribed to support a constitutional amendment that allowed the popular president to seek an unprecedented second consecutive term.
Mr Uribe's response stood Colombian politics on its head. With about 80 per cent popularity, according to opinion polls, analysts agreed he could win another election and extend his time in office.
"This is his way of taking the momentum back from the court. It's a brilliant counter-punch," said Mauricio Romero, political science professor at Bogota's Javeriana University. "He is saying that institutions do not matter as much as his popularity does."
The scandal and Mr Uribe's response upset local financial markets and could further complicate efforts at passing a trade deal with the United States. Mr Uribe is the US's staunchest ally in South America. Colombia's peso currency fell hard yesterday morning after Mr Uribe said Congress should approve a referendum to allow voters to decide if a repeat election will be held.
This would take the matter out of the hands of the courts, with which Mr Uribe has feuded over his hard-line policies. "The right path has to be democratic rule," Mr Uribe said on television following the court decision.
The judges sentenced ex-Congress member Yidis Medina to nearly four years of house arrest for accepting illegal favours from government officials in exchange for supporting the re-election legislation.
The court also asked constitutional authorities to determine whether Mr Uribe's re-election was legal in light of the bribery, raising the possibility that it could be overturned.
Colombia's peso plunged 4.62 per cent to 1,960 per US dollar on what traders called political jitters after Mr Uribe, in his television address, accused the judges of overstepping their bounds and playing politics.
With Medina sentenced, charges are expected to be filed against the officials whom she says induced her vote by promising she would be able to name her friends to local government commissions in her home province of Santander.
The opposition said Mr Uribe is using the Medina case to consolidate his already strong influence over Colombia. "He's using a bribery case to justify a new election that would tighten his grip on power," said anti-Uribe columnist Ramiro Bejarano.
The bespectacled, conservative president is loved by many in this Andean country for cutting crime and sparking economic growth, while cracking down on left-wing insurgents.
He had been leaving open the possibility of another change in law that would allow him to run again in 2010.
The Yidis scandal comes on top of investigations linking some of Mr Uribe's closest congressional allies to far-right death squads. Dozens of coalition members are accused of using paramilitary thugs to intimidate voters.
The cases have helped bog down passage in the US Congress of a trade pact being blocked by US Democrats who are concerned about Mr Uribe's human rights record in a country that has suffered decades of guerrilla war funded by the cocaine trade.
At one meeting at the presidential palace, Medina said Mr Uribe walked in and asked her to vote for the re-election measure, assuring her that his administration would honour its commitments to her.
But the government did not deliver on all its promises, which she says led to her going public. -