450,000,000.00 COP

450 million Colombian pesos, that is 230,000 US dollars. This is the upper limit of how much a candidate for the Senate may legally spend on the election campaign. For the lower house it depends on the number of registered voters in the candidate's district. The limit will typically be about 150,000 USD.

230,000 USD appears as a lot of money in a country where half of the population is really poor.

Candidates get (some) money back from the state, after the elections. In order to recover it all (the legal amount that is), about 100,000 personal votes are needed. Extremely few receive that many votes, but it happens. In 2006 liberal Juan Manuel Lopez got 146,000 votes. Lopez is now in prison for collaborating with paramilitary groups - but is expected to be replaced (in the Senate) by his wife Arleth Casado "Siempre con Todos". The high scorers normally stay between 30,000 and 60,000 personal votes.

Some candidates have very intensive campaigns, with lots of appearances, cars with loudspeakers, merchandise, distribution of gifts, parties, campaign staff. And much advertising on cars, murals, huge billboards, in radio and television, mobile phone jingles, websites, Facebook, Twitter — for months. Some candidates for the Senate do campaigning in departments, as they are elible in the whole country. This means a lot of travel, in some parts necessarily by air.

Let's have a look at one candidate, Maritza Martínez, representing "La U" in the government coalition. She has bee campaigning for a year, as documented on her website. Here we can also see her crowds, that she is distributing gifts, and this Saturday [13 February] she invites to an open meeting and concert with wellknown artists in the centre of Bogotá.

In a recent interview Martínez explains that her 20 billboards are not that expensive, some 20,000 USD in all. That is certainly a bargain, but still this fragment eats about 10% of her legal budget. She goes on to tell that she does not distribute any gifts, while the many proudly exposed photos on her website tells quite another story.

Martínez is campaigning in four departments, a vast area. At times she uses air transport, also helicopters, as displayed on the web. This she nicely explains by saying that the pilots are friends of her father, so they give her a favourable price! Well, well - one might wonder what a serious accountant would comment on that. But the risk of getting into trouble is probably neglible. Martínez' ex-congressmember husband Luis Carlos Torres is her advisor and accompanies her — he himself has had to resign from Congress as he is being investigated for parapolitics.

These nice people are from the core uribista party, La U.