Politics and elections in Colombia

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Very informative thread, Hash. Thanks to you I'm getting to know more about Columbia.

[Velasco]

The profile and family links of the Uribista María del Rosario Guerra de la Espriella are terribly fascinating. For instance Joselito, her brother and former senator, seems an interesting criminal character.... And the best thing is that she appears in that wonderful graphic on political inbreeding marriages!

I didn't know of those Uribe statements on same sex marriage. but they don't surprise me at all.

Well, thanks for the very informative thread. It's useful to me in order to catch up with Colombian political affairs.

[Hash]

Thanks for the comments. I'm pleased that at least a few are reading what I write

Vice President Germán Vargas Lleras is officially resigning today, to legally clear the way for his 2018 presidential candidacy. The Senate will formally accept his resignation within a few days -- although some of his enemies in the Partido de la U had previously suggested that the Senate was under no obligation to accept it, and he will be replaced as vice president by Óscar Naranjo, who is apparently receiving his membership card from the Partido de la U tonight.

I'll write about Vargas Lleras in the next few days (as well as about the new VP), but in the meantime, Semana has a timeline of Vargas Lleras' career: http://especiales.semana.com/vargas-lleras/

[Hash]

Updates:

• Santos' 2010 campaign manager Roberto Prieto admitted that cartoonishly corrupt Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht paid $400,000 for some of Santos' billboards and posters in the 2010 election through a Panamanian company. Previously, Odebrecht was said to have contracted a poll in February 2014 for $1 million through a Panamanian pollster to 'get closer' to the government, and there was the unresolved and questionable claim by former senator Otto Bula that he gave $1 million in Odebrecht money to a friend of Roberto Prieto to give to Santos' 2014 campaign. In any case, Santos said in a video that "I have just found out" and called for a full investigation, asking the National Electoral Council (CNE) to reopen the case even if the statute of limitations has passed. However, Santos' "I just found out" sounds a lot like Ernesto Samper's infamous "everything was behind my back" and everybody is calling this Santos' "elephant" (during the Proceso 8.000, an archbishop famously said that not realizing that dirty money financed your campaign is like not realizing that an elephant is stomping around in your room). He didn't need this. I'm personally unfazed by this (but worried of its knock-on effects), mostly because I have seafront property to sell you in Bogotá if you think that Colombian electoral campaigns are financed only with honest money.
• As I said, Germán Vargas Lleras has officially resigned. He gave his official report of his time as vice president on Tuesday night in Bogotá, at a big social event attended by many of the top political elites. Meanwhile, his enemies in the Partido de la U couldn't contain their excitement and threw a dinner party for his successor, former police chief Óscar Naranjo, who is 'theirs'
• As Congress' ordinary session resume after the extraordinary sessions called in December to implement the peace agreement through the 'fast-track', the 'fast-track' has been more of a snail-track - only three laws have been passed through in three months, which is shameful and very bad news for implementation. One of these laws is the amendment to create the transitional justice system, so not unimportant, but both the government and Congress have failed shamefully in their jobs. In Congress, the Conservatives have been more focused on plotting their warpath for 2018 and making their usual scenes; Cambio Radical has slowed implementation by staging hold-ups and the Partido de la U has seen a nasty public spat between Mauricio Lizcano (president of the Senate from the U) and his archenemy senator Armando Benedetti (also from the U), with Lizcano reprimanding the latter like an unruly schoolchild. A lot of important laws and amendments must be passed this year, and it will only get more complicated with ordinary sessions resuming (and other issues being discussed) and congressmen's customary absenteeism in preparation for election season. The FARC aren't too pleased, but to their credit they aren't adding fuel to the fire - at least in public.
• On the other side, Álvaro Uribe has been at his ranch in Rionegro recovering from a medical procedure and has used his time to hold an impressive number of meetings to put his ducks in a row. Notably, he met with Alejandro Ordóñez, a likely 2018 presidential candidate, to discuss an alliance (a 'coalition of the No') for 2018, although so far it's mostly good intentions and goodwill rather than any concrete ideas (i.e. who will be the candidate and how will he be chosen). Uribe and Ordóñez have teamed up to call for a large anti-Santos demonstration for April 1, to march "against corruption and castro-chavismo".
• Humberto de la Calle, the popular chief negotiator in Havana and potential 2018 candidate, has begun talking like a presidential candidate - he rhetorically asked whether Colombia needed a president who knocks people on the head (coscorrón), an obvious reference to Vargas Lleras hitting a bodyguard on the head in December, an incident which went viral and has become known as 'el coscorrón'.
• Baby steps were taken towards a centre-left 'anti-corruption alliance' with the Greens (Claudia López, Antonio Navarro), the moderate faction of the Polo (Clara López) and Gustavo Petro -- they held a meeting in Bogotá yesterday. Sergio Fajardo was out of the country, while the Polo's official candidate, Jorge Enrique Robledo, didn't come because Clara López was there. Again, mostly good intentions rather than concrete ideas. Robledo's absence isn't great, although Petro showing up is probably good because his relations with Claudia and Clara López aren't great.

[Hash]

The average level of discourse from the Colombian right these days:



This is from Bogotá city councillor Marco Fidel Ramírez, self-proclaimed "city councillor of the family" and steadfast opponent of what he has called "atheist-Marxist" and the impending "homosexual dictatorship". Now he is attacking The Beauty and the Best, because it's homosexual propaganda or something.

[Crumpets]

If all threads in the international elections board had this much background, both in terms of detail and straightforwardness, I'd almost certainly post here more.

As it is, although I'm probably closest to the Liberal Party or the Alternative Democratic Pole politically, I'm tempted to support the Conservative Party, simply because of your description of their policies.

[Hash]

If all threads in the international elections board had this much background, both in terms of detail and straightforwardness, I'd almost certainly post here more.

As it is, although I'm probably closest to the Liberal Party or the Alternative Democratic Pole politically, I'm tempted to support the Conservative Party, simply because of your description of their policies.

Thank you, Crumpets. I'm glad that some are liking this thread.

Regarding the Conservative Party, a meeting was supposedly held yesterday to 'decide' (ha!) the party's support to the government. Ordóñez and Marta Lucía Ramírez had both sent letters asking the party to declare itself in opposition to the government. Conservative leader Hernán Andrade, a santista senator, advised against taking rushed decisions on such important matters - in other words, "why can't we all get along like we used to in middle school?". Such a decision would not be 'rushed' obviously, because the party has been divided over that very issue since 2013 if not earlier.

In a very weird kerfuffle, the departmental assembly of Antioquia a few weeks ago voted 15-1 to declare Alejandro Ordóñez as 'adoptive son of Antioquia', some useless honorary title, but there was mini-outrage over this and the assembly today voted to repeal this proposal. The initial proposal had been led by Conservative deputy Carlos José Ríos, who is from the political group of the Suárez Mira siblings in Bello (a Medellín suburb) -- a group founded by Óscar Suárez Mira, a former senator turned fugitive (convicted for parapolitics and now facing corruption charges), and currently led by senator Olga Suárez Mira (the former's sister) and currently incarcerated Bello mayor César Suárez Mira, arrested in December 2016 for falsifying his high school diploma (yes, high school diploma). The initiative to withdraw the title was proposed by Norman Correa Betancur (Partido de la U), who had ironically been one of the 15 to vote in favour of the initial proposal. The official reason invoked is that the title can only be granted to someone who has lived in the region for at least two years.

In other news, the Senate duly approved Vargas Lleras' resignation without any drama.

[Hash]

As promised, here is a profile of Germán Vargas Lleras, one of the main 2018 contenders:

Vargas Lleras, born in Bogotá in 1962, is the maternal grandson of former President Carlos Lleras Restrepo (1966-1970) and the nephew of Carlos Lleras de la Fuente, former ambassador to the US. He is a lawyer by profession, graduated from the Universidad del Rosario (one of the most prestigious private universities in the country, the alma mater of many famous politicians).

Growing up close to his grandfather, Vargas Lleras entered politics as a teenager – first in the ranks of the Nuevo Liberalismo (new liberalism), the dissident reformist and moralizing movement founded by Luis Carlos Galán in 1979 as a dissident faction of the Liberal Party. It virulently attacked political corruption and made its name in the 1980s by being the first to denounce the infiltration of the drug cartels (notably Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel) in Colombian politics – a battle which took the lives of several members of the movement, most famously Galán himself in 1989, shot in Soacha (Cundinamarca) by a hired assassin as he was the runaway favourite for the Colombian presidency in 1990.

Under the banner of Nuevo Liberalismo, Vargas Lleras won his first elected office – municipal councillor in the small town of Bojacá (in Cundinamarca, outside of Bogotá) – at the age of 19 in 1981. He was elected city councillor in Bogotá in 1988, reelected in 1990 and 1992. Following Galán’s assassination in 1989, Vargas Lleras rejoined the wider Liberal Party and served as secretary general of the Liberal Party between 1990 and 1992.

Vargas Lleras was elected to the Senate in 1994, with his Liberal list obtaining about 23,800 votes nationally (over 13,200 of them from Bogotá), placing in the bottom tier of successful candidates. He was reelected to a second term in 1998, again with the Liberal Party, with about 55,200 votes.

Vargas Lleras gained a national profile as a strong opponent of President Andrés Pastrana’s peace process with the FARC (1998-2002), famously detailing the FARC’s abuses and illegal activities in the Caguán demilitarized zone (zona de distensión) during a Senate debate in October 2001. His opposition to the peace process led him to leave the Liberal Party and endorse the presidential candidacy of Álvaro Uribe, a Liberal dissident with a hawkish stance against the FARC and the doomed peace process. Riding on his newfound national renown, Vargas Lleras was reelected to a third term in the Senate in 2002, with 210,500 votes, making him the third most popular candidate nationally.

In 2002, he ran with Colombia Siempre, one of a plethora of empty shell parties which had proliferated in the late ’90s (this party was led by Juan Lozano, a former galanista, now an uribista columnist). Pushed by the partisan consolidation which followed the 2003 political-electoral reform, Vargas joined Cambio Radical (CR, Radical Change), a party founded by galanista Liberal dissidents in 1998, and soon thereafter became leader of the party. Since then, though particularly since 2010, he has maintained a stronger hold over his party than any other Colombian politician (besides Uribe with his new cult-like party) and revealed himself as an excellent political operator, strategist and an expert in the art of forming political coalitions, ensuring bureaucratic representation for his people and strengthening his own party.

Vargas remained a loyal ally of Uribe during the first term, playing an important role in securing congressional support for his most important legislative initiatives. He served as president of the Senate for the 2003-2004 session, which saw the first debates on the constitutional amendment allowing for one consecutive reelection. However, the two men had some disagreements and their relations were complicated after 2005 by Uribe’s apparent preference for Juan Manuel Santos over Vargas Lleras. The latter resented the former as an opportunist and arriviste who was rapidly making his way up without having earned his stripes as Vargas, who felt that he had been with Uribe from day one (even before Uribe’s victory in 2002 became inevitable). Santos and Vargas had nasty encounters in 2005 and 2006, to the point that Uribe himself was forced to intervene. In the 2006 congressional elections, Vargas Lleras led CR’s list and won the most preferential votes of any single candidate that year – 223,330. Nevertheless, the victory of Santos’ new party Partido de la U (with 20 Senate seats against 15 for CR) was a disappointment to Vargas.

On two occasions, Vargas was the victim of terrorist attacks. In 2003, he lost fingers on his left hand from a letter bomb. In October 2005, he narrowly escaped a car bomb which severely injured several of his bodyguards. The government quickly attributed the attack to the FARC, but Vargas believed that it had been a plot involving the corrupt state intelligence agency (the DAS) and paramilitaries.

Relations between Uribe and Vargas Lleras became increasingly strained during the first half of Uribe’s second term, particularly as Uribe and his most fervent supporters began ramming through their referendum on a second reelection. Vargas Lleras – because of his own presidential ambitions – declared himself an uribista antirreeleccionista (anti-reelection uribista), something which a furious Uribe declared could not be a thing and responded by stripping Vargas’ friends of their bureaucratic positions. The issue divided Vargas’ party, with some of its members of Congress – for example, representative Roy Barreras and senator Nancy Patricia Gutiérrez – supporting Uribe’s second reelection. In the lower house, presided at the time by Vargas’ close ally Germán Varón, CR representatives contributed to to the lengthy agony of the reelection referendum bill. Vargas Lleras continued to support Uribe’s centrepiece democratic security policy, but criticized the government and its ministers on several occasions.

To make matters worse for Vargas Lleras during this time, Cambio Radical was the party hit hardest by the parapolitics scandal – no less than 6 senators and 9 representatives from the party were found guilty of having ties to paramilitary groups in the 2002 and 2006 elections. 8 of CR’s 15 senators elected in 2006 were investigated for parapolitics, the highest absolute number among any party, although not the highest percentage. Among those convicted was Javier Cáceres Leal, elected to the Senate on the CR list in 2006 and 2010 and president of the Senate in 2009-2010. He was arrested in September 2010 and sentenced to 9 years in jail in 2012. The scandal further tainted Vargas’ image, showing his willingness to ally with sleazy and contemptible people for strategic purposes.

Vargas Lleras resigned his Senate seat in June 2008, to devote all his time to preparing his 2010 presidential candidacy (which he officially announced in June 2009). He fed a lengthy suspense about his potential participation in a ‘interparty primary’ either with the opposition Liberal Party (as ‘Liberal reunification’) or uribismo, but went through to the end with his candidacy. Lacking Uribe’s official backing (which ultimately went to his rival Santos) and indeed shunned by the palace, Vargas Lleras’ campaign fared poorly in the polls and never enjoyed a spate of momentum. However, his campaign was one of the better ones that year – efficiently and smartly run, with a solid program of ideas, a memorable slogan (mejor es posible – better is possible) and a standout performance in the debates. It was not enough for a top two finish, but with 10.1% he was an unexpectedly strong third (he had polled 3-5% in the last polls).

Santos and Vargas Lleras reconciled their differences between both rounds, and he was appointed Minister of the Interior and Justice (the two portfolios had been merged by Uribe’s government reorganization in 2002, but were later separated in 2011), an appointment poorly received by Uribe. He had originally been rumoured for the Ministry of Defence, but in the face of Uribe’s frontal opposition to that idea and Santos’ pragmatic desires to avoid a spat with Uribe so early in his presidency, he received the interior and justice ministry instead. As interior and justice minister, he was in charge of mending ties between the executive and the courts, which had become appallingly bad during Uribe’s second term. On the political front, he consolidated in Congress the president-elect’s Unidad Nacional alliance with the Liberal, Conservative, U and CR parties. He was also the government’s chief advocate for the victims’ law, a royalties reform and other major legislative projects. In May 2012, Vargas was shuffled to the Ministry of Housing, where he attached his name to the government’s popular program of 100,000 free (or low-cost subsidized) houses and apartments for poor families. He saw the ministry and its most publicized program as an opportunity to add a ‘social’ angle to his image as a strict, conservative law-and-order politician. Since then, he has relished photo-ops delivering new free houses to the poor.

Vargas and Santos had a good relation throughout the first term, but questions about Vargas Lleras’ political future arose in 2013 as the 2014 electoral cycle drew closer. He was rumoured as a presidential candidate on the off chance that Santos did not run for reelection, others speculated a return to the Senate leading a CR list to oppose Uribe’s list . In May 2013, he resigned from the housing ministry to lead Santos’ reelection campaign.

In February 2014, he was announced as Santos’ running-mate. While the Colombian vice presidency has usually been a low-profile position, not a stepping stone to higher office, Vargas Lleras’ stature and the legal possibility for the vice president to be appointed to other executive positions or be delegated responsibilities opened an interesting possibility for him. Following the hard-won reelection, Vice President Vargas Lleras was given responsibility for several important domestic policy issues – infrastructure (notably the government’s multi-million dollar investments in ‘fourth generation highways’ across the country), housing, access to water and mining. The ministers of transportation and housing, appointed in 2014, were both from CR (but CR lost the transportation ministry in the April 2016 shuffle).

The vice president spent most of his time promoting the big infrastructure projects and housing photo-ops, a smart strategy given that transportation and housing are basically the only two remaining areas where the government remains popular.

[Hash]

In the meantime, Vargas Lleras was conspicuously silent about the Havana peace process – leading to speculation that he was uncomfortable (if not opposed) to the peace process, given his past positions, and that he was playing it cautious in anticipation of a 2018 presidential candidacy (reaping benefits of peace if it is successful, running a hardline conservative campaign if it fails or is unpopular). After the first peace agreement was announced in August 2016, Santos uncharacteristically called on Vargas Lleras to campaign for the Yes in the plebiscite – “I want to see you next week supporting the Yes”. Irked by Santos’ admonishment, Vargas gave a “yes, but” answer – that he would vote yes, but he said that he disagreed with the powers granted to the transitional justice mechanism. His actual participation in the plebiscite campaign was very limited, mostly summed up to a large campaign event in Barranquilla with Santos and mayor Alex Char in the last few days. The results of the October 2 plebiscite – the narrow unexpected No victory – showed, in the details, that the CR’s clientelistic political machines had not turned out their people for the Yes, resulting in very low turnout in regions like the Caribbean where CR has built strong machines.

Vargas spent much of his time in the vice president laying the groundwork for his quasi-certain presidential candidacy. In the 2015 local and regional elections, with the help of Alex Char, now the wildly popular CR mayor of Barranquilla, he built a strong coalition of CR candidates across the country, particularly in the Caribbean region. Many of his candidates were controversial because of past links to organized crime, illegal groups or corruption scandals, but most were successful. In Bogotá, CR endorsed the ultimately successful mayoral candidacy of former mayor Enrique Peñalosa, going against CR’s other two Unidad Nacional allies (the U and the Liberals) who supported Rafael Pardo — although given that Peñalosa’s approval rating is barely 25% and faces a serious recall effort, he isn’t an asset to any campaign. CR has also been saddled with its endorsements of two governors in the Caribbean department of La Guajira in 2011 and 2015 — in 2011 it endorsed Kiko Gómez, who was arrested in October 2013 and recently convicted for a triple homicide (with more charges pending); in 2015 it endorsed Oneida Pinto, a politician close to Kiko Gómez who was removed from office in 2016 (over a legal technicality) but is now facing several corruption charges. CR’s leaders are refusing to take responsibility for these endorsements, with the general result being bad press for the party and Vargas Lleras.

Most politicians in the Party of the U and the Liberal Party were publicly annoyed with the vice president’s barely concealed presidential aspirations and Santos’ apparent favouritism for him (in bureaucratic appointment and favours). The U and the Liberals have been exploring the possibility of forming a coalition for the 2018 elections, officially to defend the implementation of the peace agreement, unofficially to form a strong alternative to both uribismo and Vargas Lleras. However, in January 2017, Vargas Lleras allegedly offered the vice presidency (on his 2018 ticket) to Simón Gaviria, the director of the national planning department and the son of former Liberal president César Gaviria. Reportedly, Vargas Lleras made similar offers to Conservative representative David Barguil and uribista senator and 2018 candidate Iván Duque. Although little has since come of this, it shows Vargas Lleras’ remarkable abilities as a keen political strategist, working to divide potential rival parties by co-opting (poaching?) individual politicians.

Vargas Lleras is a hot-tempered man prone to fits of anger, often reprimanding subordinates or lowly politicians for unsatisfactory work or performance. In public, he is usually able to keep up appearances. However, in December 2016, Vargas Lleras, while visiting a village, hit one of his bodyguards on the head (apparently over how the bodyguard was managing a local crowd). The incident went viral and is known as the coscorrón.

Germán Vargas Lleras has typically ranked as one of the most popular politicians in the country, with a teflon-like popularity. While Santos has become extremely unpopular, with a 24% approval in the latest Gallup poll, Vargas Lleras remained quite popular, with favourable ratings in the 50-60% range – because of his identification with the government’s popular policy areas and his detachment from the more controversial areas (peace process, the economy). However, auguring poorly for his nascent presidential campaign, the last Gallup poll in February 2017 showed a major collapse in his popularity: for the first time, he has a net unfavourable rating — 44% to 40%, a 20 point swing since December. He had been hobbled by the the coscorrón, general distaste of establishment politicians like him, unfavourable media coverage and by CR’s La Guajira nightmares; even a xenophobic anti-Venezuelan schoolyard brawl with Diosdado Cabello hasn’t saved him (at an event, he said that the free houses weren’t for venecos, a pejorative term for Venezuelans in certain regions of Colombia, and Diosdado Cabello retorted by calling Vargas hijo del gran puto, or ‘son of a bitch’).

[Hash]

Quick updates:

A very very important local referendum (consulta popular) being held tomorrow in Cajamarca (Tolima) on the future of mining projects in the area. The area is coveted by South African mining giant AngloGold Ashanti, which claims there are massive gold reserves in this mountainous region. Locals have widespread, serious concerns about the environmental impact this project would have on an environmentally sensitive region, as well as on water reserves and pollution. There has been lots of nastiness associated with this referendum and it is very highly anticipated - a No (to mining) could set the ball rolling for other referendums in other places and check the government's 'mining locomotive' dreams. There is a turnout quorum of a third of the electorate, or, in other words, the No needs 5,437 votes (and a plurality over the Yes) to win. I recommend that you keep an eye on this if you're interested by big mining or environmental causes. I can give some more background if people are interested.



The 'special electoral mission' has delivered preliminary recommendations on how to reform the electoral system. It's proposing a restructuring of the election management bodies along 'Mexican lines' - i.e. an administrative EMB running electoral processes and a specialized electoral court for legal disputes. For the actual electoral system, it's proposing closed lists across the board to strengthen parties and reduce clientelism, keeping the 'national Senate' as is (but with closed lists), growing the House from 166 to 200 seats and a mixed system for the House with PR list seats and single-member districts. Finally, it recommends a mixed, predominantly public, system of financing increasing public funding to parties, half before the election and the other half after the election. It also proposes more effective control by the EMB and free airtime on TV. It isn't recommending compulsory voting. These are just very early ideas and there's no guarantee they will become reality, but as an Atlas nerd, I basically live for this kind of obscure debate over electoral rules. If you want to read more about this, read my lengthier blog post: https://colombianreflections.wordpress.com/2017/03/25/reforming-colombias-electoral-system/

[seb_pard]

Well, Mamerto is now used by people who live in their parents' basements to refer to a left-wing person in Latin-America.

[Hash]

Rumour is that the turnout threshold (a third/5438 votes) has been met in Cajamarca, which would validate the referendum and all but guarantee a No victory. Would be a tremendous victory for environmental and water rights against cartoonishly evil mining giants.

[Hash]

Cajamarca referendum on mining projects

Turnout threshold: 5,438
Total votes cast: 2,383

No 2322
Yes 32


7/18 reporting

[Hash]

Cajamarca referendum on mining projects

Turnout threshold: 5,438
Total votes cast: 3418

No 3347
Yes 30

10/18 reporting. Turnout threshold should be met.

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VICTORY! With final results, the turnout threshold was surpassed and the No won overwhelmingly:

Turnout: 6,296 (38.6%)

No 6,165 (97.9%)
Yes 76
Unmarked 41
Invalid 14

Tremendous defeat for the mining multinational, specifically AngloGold Ashanti, and a beautiful victory for all those people who don't like contaminated water, defaced mountains and destroyed environments.

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Quick updates:

Dearly beloved Uribe has returned to 'work' after his 35-day convalescence from a medical procedure, and has caused everybody to go crazy. Uribe claimed that Santos stole the 2014 elections and characteristically lost his temper after being attacked by senators Juan Manuel Galán (Liberal) and Claudia López (Green) for his government's mass corruption and criminality and/or usual ad hominem attacks. Santos called the CD's opposition 'virulent and without limits', accusing the party of sending a letter to the US Congress asking for the suspension of US aid to Colombia (presumably because Santos is abolishing democracy/has surrendered to the communists-terrorists/is literally Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro reincarnated), which the CD has denied but has thanked Santos for the idea.

Uribe, Ordóñez and their various brain-dead cultists are organizing a major march on April 1 "against Santos and corruption", the latter part being the true peak of brazenness and shamelessness given that Uribe's government was the most corrupt and criminal in recent Colombian history and that Ordóñez was removed from office for his corrupt and unconstitutional reelection as inspector general. Thankfully, a lot of politicians, columnists and regular people are seeing through Uribe's shamelessness and calling him out for it.

Óscar Naranjo, retired police commander, has been elected vice president by the Senate as expected, with the support of the governing coalition and the enthusiasm of the Partido de la U in particular. He is expected to focus on his issues of expertise, namely security and the post-conflict. He is fairly widely respected and was wildly popular as police chief.

Following the anti-mining victory in Cajamarca's local referendum on Sunday, the mining multinationals and their sycophants in government (namely mines minister Germán Arce, a forgettable Conservative technocrat) very quickly moved to deny the vote's legitimacy or legal effects. The issue of whether or not existing mining projects are affected is debatable and will likely be decided by the courts, but consultas populares are legally binding and there are no doubts about this. I find Arce's typical mining sector-lapdog whining about "muh legal insecurity!!" to be particularly disingenuous. A consulta popular is a constitutional right and has been on the books since 1994, so this is a case of people using their constitutional and legal rights. The Cajamarca referendum's supporters Twitter-shamed Arce with the hashtag "#CajamarcaSeRespeta".

A new Polimétrica poll by Cifras & Conceptos for 2018 which doesn't say a lot.

Who would you vote for?
Petro 14%
Vargas Lleras 13%
Claudia López 11%
Fajardo 8%
Clara López 7%
Robledo 4%
Galán 3%
de la Calle 3%
Pacho Santos 2%
Ordóñez 2%
Holmes Trujillo 2%
Duque 1%
Ramírez 1%
Ramos 1%
Córdoba 1%
Other 4%
Don't know/no answer 22%

Who do you want to be president? (open format)
Vargas Lleras 10%
Petro 11%
Claudia López 9%
Fajardo 5%
Clara López 5%
Robledo 4%
de la Calle 2%
Ordóñez 2%
Zuluaga 1%
Galán 1%
Holmes Trujillo 1%
Other 7%
Don't know/no answer 44%

Who do you think will be president? (open format)
Vargas Lleras 22%
Petro 7%
Claudia López 6%
Fajardo 4%
Clara López 3%
Robledo 2%
de la Calle 2%
Ordóñez 2%
Zuluaga 1%
Galán 1%
Holmes Trujillo 1%
Pacho Santos 1%
Other 3%
Don't know/no answer 45%

Who do you think will go to the runoff?
Vargas Lleras 19%
Petro 8%
Claudia López 8%
Fajardo 5%
Clara López 4%
Robledo 2%
de la Calle 2%
Ordóñez 2%
Zuluaga 1%
Galán 1%
Holmes Trujillo 1%
Pacho Santos 1%
Ramírez 1%
Duque 1%
CD 1%
Other 2%
Don't know/no answer 43%

Support for recalling Bogotá mayor Enrique Peñalosa is 61% in favour and 31% against.

Colombia defeated Ecuador 2-0 in WC qualifying yesterday. In Colombia, this is far more important than politics

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Quick irrelevant and useless updates:

Álvaro Uribe and his posse have asked Santos to resign for their usual list of grievances, corruption (again, the irony), surrendering the country to the terrorists and so forth. It is very common for Colombian politicians, particularly the old waste of oxygen Andrés Pastrana, to ask for their opponent's resignation on a weekly basis. Ernesto Samper, who isn't a reference on stuff like this, did have a funny comment about this in a recent interview, saying that asking for resignations was "what Pastrana does" (Samper and Pastrana hate one another since 1994).

Uribe and his criminals' march against corruption will now be joined by a true reference in morals and ethics, the incomparable Jhon Jairo Velásquez 'Popeye', Pablo Escobar's old chief hitman (sicario) and convicted murderer. 'Popeye' has now become some sort of YouTube/Twitter commentator with disjointed ramblings about 'corrupt politicians' and that sort of stuff. If you needed more proof that Uribe attracts the best people...

Edit: the mountain of uribista irony and shamelessness grew even higher, with Fernando Londoño, Uribe's first interior minister (2002-2004) calling on supporters to participate in the march against corruption. Londoño was, wait for it, convicted and disqualified from holding public office for a corruption case (abuse of power and obstruction of justice).

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The main news in Colombia is the horrendous tragedy in Mocoa (Putumayo), where torrential rainfall on Friday night led to rivers overflowing and massive mudslides. So far, 210 people have been confirmed dead in this tragedy - and the death toll is rising. Thousands more are affected, losing their homes. A good part of the city has been completely wiped out. It will remain without electricity, drinking water and minimal food for a good while longer. Some of the testimonies relayed the media give you a tiny idea of how absolutely horrible it must have been. Mocoa and Putumayo didn't need this - it's already a relatively poor department which has suffered so much from the armed conflict.

Santos has declared a state of emergency and has been in Mocoa both yesterday and today coordinating rescue and aid efforts.

In contrast to this actual tragedy, yesterday's uribista et al. "march against corruption" seems flippant. The march was a relative success - the numbers game in these is always endless, but they're talking of 130,000 in Medellín, the uribista capital, 15,000 in Bogotá, 10,000 in Cali, 5,000 in Bucaramanga and a few thousands in all of the other major cities in Colombia. There were also marches in 6-7 cities in the US including NYC and Miami. These numbers are larger than past uribista marches, like the one last April, although it mostly confirms Uribe's continued drawing power and the real strength of the Colombian far-right and their societal allies.

Naturally, brazen shamelessness and hypocrisy were the highlights of the march -- the general 'anti-corruption' discourses, the posters decrying the 'political persecution' of poor, tortured souls like convicted criminals Andrés Felipe Arias or Fernando Londoño or the presence of convicted mass murderer Jhon Jairo Velásquez 'Popeye' of Pablo Escobar's Medellín Cartel in the march in Medellín. Disjointed lunatic Pacho Santos (kidnapped and held hostage by the Medellín Cartel in 1990) had a shameful excuse for Popeye's participation - "he's paid his time" - when Popeye has shown no real signs of repentance and plays on the morbid fascination for Escobar/cartels. Uribista justice (mano firme, corazón grande) once again -- the paramilitaries and drug cartels can change and become upstanding moral paragons but the FARC will always be terrorists and we must never sympathize with that scum.

However, from the general mood of the marches, anti-peace weighed more than anti-corruption, with all the associated lies -- Santos is a communist traitor, Colombia will be worse than Venezuela, the constitution has been destroyed by the FARC (oh, the irony) and so forth. The main point of the march for the organizers was to get massive crowds to launch next year's presidential campaigns. Politicians were the main stars in Bogotá and Medellín - Ordóñez, Iván Duque, Pacho Santos, Rosario Guerra, Marta Lucía Ramírez, Pastrana were in Bogotá, Uribe (and Popeye) in Medellín. Evangelical pastors-shysters organized the bulk of the marches in Cali and Cartagena, and Catholic traditionalist/ultra-conservatives came out in force in Bucaramanga. Besides a 'minute of silence' for the victims in Mocoa, none of the major speakers in Bogotá, like Ordóñez, said anything about the tragedy. Oh, the beautiful Catholic solidarity with victims in times of need (yes, but the gays have a secret agenda you see!).

Even more shamefully, retarded uribista senator Daniel Cabrales disgustingly claimed yesterday that the Mocoa mudslide was the fault of the FARC. He was forced to walk back his statement and issue the usual scripted apology very quickly, but it tells you all you need to know about the kind of heartless psychopaths which populate the CD.

Semana cartoonist Vladdo and columnist Daniel Samper prepared some posters denouncing a few of the major corruption scandals from Uribe's government and went to the uribista march. They were quickly forced to leave. A good example of the polarized environment, which has a lot of similarities to the US. Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omywYajwKB0

[Velasco]

Vargas Lleras is a hot-tempered man prone to fits of anger, often reprimanding subordinates or lowly politicians for unsatisfactory work or performance. In public, he is usually able to keep up appearances. However, in December 2016, Vargas Lleras, while visiting a village, hit one of his bodyguards on the head (apparently over how the bodyguard was managing a local crowd). The incident went viral and is known as the coscorrón.

Germán Vargas Lleras has typically ranked as one of the most popular politicians in the country, with a teflon-like popularity. While Santos has become extremely unpopular, with a 24% approval in the latest Gallup poll, Vargas Lleras remained quite popular, with favourable ratings in the 50-60% range – because of his identification with the government’s popular policy areas and his detachment from the more controversial areas (peace process, the economy). However, auguring poorly for his nascent presidential campaign, the last Gallup poll in February 2017 showed a major collapse in his popularity: for the first time, he has a net unfavourable rating — 44% to 40%, a 20 point swing since December. He had been hobbled by the the coscorrón, general distaste of establishment politicians like him, unfavourable media coverage and by CR’s La Guajira nightmares; even a xenophobic anti-Venezuelan schoolyard brawl with Diosdado Cabello hasn’t saved him (at an event, he said that the free houses weren’t for venecos, a pejorative term for Venezuelans in certain regions of Colombia, and Diosdado Cabello retorted by calling Vargas hijo del gran puto, or ‘son of a bitch’).

 

I think the coscorrón ("smack on the head"?) incident and the dialectical exchange with Diosdado Cabello speak eloquently about the personality and statesmanship of Vargas Lleras. With all his countless flaws, Mr Santos is more classy than his former running mate. As for the drop of Vargas Lleras' popularity and the mood against establishment politicians, I guess it's too soon to say if that trend will continue. I'd rather like to see a decent candidate with chances against Vargas Lleras and the Uribe's clique. There's much time left until the elections, so I won't lose hope by now.

The main news in Colombia is the horrendous tragedy in Mocoa (Putumayo), where torrential rainfall on Friday night led to rivers overflowing and massive mudslides. So far, 210 people have been confirmed dead in this tragedy - and the death toll is rising. Thousands more are affected, losing their homes. A good part of the city has been completely wiped out. It will remain without electricity, drinking water and minimal food for a good while longer. Some of the testimonies relayed the media give you a tiny idea of how absolutely horrible it must have been. Mocoa and Putumayo didn't need this - it's already a relatively poor department which has suffered so much from the armed conflict.

Santos has declared a state of emergency and has been in Mocoa both yesterday and today coordinating rescue and aid efforts.

In contrast to this actual tragedy, yesterday's uribista et al. "march against corruption" seems flippant. The march was a relative success - the numbers game in these is always endless, but they're talking of 130,000 in Medellín, the uribista capital, 15,000 in Bogotá, 10,000 in Cali, 5,000 in Bucaramanga and a few thousands in all of the other major cities in Colombia. There were also marches in 6-7 cities in the US including NYC and Miami. These numbers are larger than past uribista marches, like the one last April, although it mostly confirms Uribe's continued drawing power and the real strength of the Colombian far-right and their societal allies.

Naturally, brazen shamelessness and hypocrisy were the highlights of the march -- the general 'anti-corruption' discourses, the posters decrying the 'political persecution' of poor, tortured souls like convicted criminals Andrés Felipe Arias or Fernando Londoño or the presence of convicted mass murderer Jhon Jairo Velásquez 'Popeye' of Pablo Escobar's Medellín Cartel in the march in Medellín. Disjointed lunatic Pacho Santos (kidnapped and held hostage by the Medellín Cartel in 1990) had a shameful excuse for Popeye's participation - "he's paid his time" - when Popeye has shown no real signs of repentance and plays on the morbid fascination for Escobar/cartels. Uribista justice (mano firme, corazón grande) once again -- the paramilitaries and drug cartels can change and become upstanding moral paragons but the FARC will always be terrorists and we must never sympathize with that scum.

Mocoa and the Putumayo region are among the hardest hit by poverty, violence and unemployment in Colombia. Avalanches seem to be the combined effect of deforestation and the heavy rainfall associated with La Niña. The inadequate use of soil, deforested for livestock farming and road construction, aggravated erosion processes in a tropical region of high mountains and rushing rivers...

As for the uribista crowd, it's fun to see they are still attached to their obsessions. I don't know wether to laugh or cry at Pacho Santos. In any case, this people will always amaze me.

(On a side note, I wonder if that famous TV series on Pablo Escobar has been succesful in Colombia)

[Hash]

Not remotely political, but it's just been discovered that a typo in the 1984 law on national symbols means that a part of the coat of arms is described with sexual innuendo. Phrygian cap is spelled as 'frigid cap', with the word 'frígido' having sexual connotations as 'lack of sexual desire or enjoyment' (as well as frigid).
http://www.elespectador.com/noticias/politica/el-gorro-frigido-de-nuestro-escudo-patrio-articulo-688786

Also a good time to point out that, in 1997, some random clown challenged the constitutionality of the text of the national anthem with some truly awful arguments: http://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/relatoria/1997/C-469-97.htm