Ex-Uribe defense minister dominates Colombia vote; to face clean-government outsider in runoff

Uribe torchbearer dominates Colombia vote

BOGOTA, Colombia — A conservative former defense minister who promises to build on Alvaro Uribe’s security gains easily defeated a maverick outsider in Colombia’s election Sunday but fell short of the votes needed to avoid a presidential runoff.

Juan Manuel Santos, a political veteran who says he’ll continue President Uribe’s popular pro-Washington policies, won 47 percent support against 21 percent for Antanas Mockus, a mathematician who pledged clean government as the Green Party candidate.

Santos, 58, needed a simple majority — 50 percent plus 1 — to avoid a June 20 runoff. He won in all but one of Colombia’s provinces and even took Bogota, considered a stronghold of Mockus, who twice served as the capital’s mayor.

Uribe was barred by a February court ruling from running for a third straight term.

Finishing third Sunday with 10 percent was German Vargas of Cambio Radical, which along with Santos’ National Unity party is a member of Uribe’s governing coalition. Trailing him with 9 percent was the main opposition candidate, Gustavo Petro of the leftist Polo Democratico Alternativo.

Although generally peaceful, Sunday was marked by nearly two dozen clashes with leftist rebels that claimed the lives of at least three soldiers, a potent reminder that Colombia’s half century-old conflict is far from resolved.

The continuing violence — and Mockus’ lack of clarity on how he would deal with it — favored Santos, a 58-year-old a Cabinet minister in three administrations running for elected office for the first time who had in pre-election polls been in a statistical dead heat with Mockus, the son of Lithuanian immigrants.

Michael Shifter, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Inter-American Dialogue think tank, said it appeared “the polls were way off the mark.”

“My sense is that many Colombians were drawn to Mockus, his appealing message and what he represented, but in the end were worried about (electing) a relative novice on security and foreign policy questions,” he said.

Combat was reported Sunday in six regions, most rural coca-growing centers in the south and west. All three combat deaths were blamed by the government on the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces, or FARC. It had called on Colombians to boycott Sunday’s vote but did not order people to stay off the roads, as it has done in rural areas in past elections.

Santos says he’ll continue Uribe’s hugely popular U.S.-backed fight against crime and rebels, which sharply curtailed kidnappings and murders though the homicide rate rose last year to 39.3 per 100,000 from 34.3 in 2008.

As defense minister from 2006-2009, Santos helped knock the wind out of the FARC, Latin America’s last remaining major rebel army. Authorities say it now numbers less than 9,000 thanks to massive desertions. Santos is a University of Kansas graduate whose family long ran El Tiempo, Colombia’s leading newspaper.

Mockus, also 58, is a mathematician, philosopher and former National University rector who says he’ll also be tough on the FARC. And though careful not to criticize Uribe, he has expressed dismay at the battery of scandals that have plagued the outgoing president, such as domestic spying, extrajudicial killings by soldiers, and the awarding of agricultural subsidies to political cronies.

In Bogota, Cecilia de Gaitan, 75, said she cast her ballot for Mockus hoping he might begin to rid Colombia of its endemic corruption.

“It won’t be easy but you have to vote with hope,” she said. She had voted for Uribe in the past two elections but called his second term “disastrous” and said she considers Santos “capable, but more of the same.”

Mockus distinguished himself with a simple message: Only through education and respect for the law will Colombians find true security. His colorful, pedagogical style catapulted him from fringe status in three short months. Online, he the biggest number of Facebook and Twitter fans.

But many voters didn’t think Mockus had what it takes to manage a country at war with leftist rebels whose institutions remain threatened by cocaine-trafficking criminal bands.

“He has no strength. We need someone with weight in the presidency,” said David Lewinski, 37, a health-care supply business owner. “He surely is the most honorable of all (the candidates), but you don’t run a government on utopian ideas.”

Lewinski said he voted for Vargas but said he’d opt for Santos in a runoff. He said he would have voted again for Uribe, who was barred by a court from running for a third consecutive term.

Petro helped expose ties between Uribe allies in Congress and far-right paramilitary militias. Some of those allies are now serving up to nine years in prison. Trailing him were former Foreign Minister Noemi Sanin of the Uribe-allied Conservative Party with 6 percent and Liberal Party candidate Rafael Pardo, a defense minister in the early 1990s, with 4 percent.

Voter turnout was 49 percent and, if taken together, the ballots for candidates from parties in Uribe’s coalition combined to nearly equal the 62 percent of the vote with which he won re-election in 2006.

Sunday’s balloting testifies to the splintering of Colombia’s political landscape during the Uribe era. Before his 2002 election, the Liberals and Conservatives dominated the country’s politics.

Mockus’ quirky past has been both a boon and a liability, depending on the voter. As university rector, he once mooned an auditorium full of unruly students. While Bogota mayor, he dispatched mimes into the streets to shame traffic scofflaws.

Santos followed a more traditional script, promising “Jobs, jobs and more jobs.” He also sought to distance himself from the scandals plaguing Uribe’s administration.

Santos, as defense minister, fired 27 officers after prosecutors accused soldiers of killing more than 1,000 civilians. Critics say he bears some responsibility, but Santos contends it was he who put an end to the abuses.

In an unrelated scandal, Uribe advisers allegedly ordered illegal spying by the DAS domestic security agency on judges, journalists and human rights workers. There have been no suggestions that Santos was in any way involved.