With the election of Mr Alvaro Uribe as president, Colombia has completed a swing of its political pendulum towards the right. He succeeds the liberal President Andres Pastrana, who was elected four years ago on a platform of peace negotiations with Farc, the left-wing guerrilla organisation. The collapse of that initiative after three years of talks has set the scene for Mr Uribe's more aggressive approach. He proposes a strengthening of the state and armed forces in response to the guerrillas, demanding that they put an end to their campaign of violence as a condition for further talks.
One can only understand Mr Uribe's appeal by taking account of the violence spawned by state collapse and social disintegration which has wreaked havoc with Colombia, one of the most developed Latin American states. These problems are intimately bound up with drug production and trafficking, long-standing rebellions against social injustice and right-wing paramilitary organisations funded by the wealthy, conflicts which now claim thousands of lives every year. Mr Pastrana's failure to deliver peace has created greater public impatience with atrocities and kidnappings committed by the Farc movement, setting the scene for Mr Uribe's election.
Mr Uribe wants to increase the military budget by one third and recruit a one million strong civilian militia. He welcomes military and security aid from the United States, whose policy towards Colombia has become a determining factor in the country's politics. This began with President Clinton's $1.3 billion Plan Colombia, which promised an integrated programme to fight illicit drug trading, rebuild the economy and deepen its democracy, using helicopters to fumigate crops and a 15,000 task force to combat associated guerrilla movements. Under President Bush there has been an even greater emphasis on such an involvement.
So far as he and the US are concerned Farc is simply a terrorist movement, relying on kidnappings, murders and drugs trafficking to sustain the territorial base it was granted during negotiations with Mr Pastrana. As is by now well known following the arrest of three men associated with the IRA in Colombia last year the Bush administration regards Farc as fundamentally opposed to US vital interests. They can be expected to act further on that assumption following Mr Uribe's victory.