Playing around

Carlos Moreno de Caro is a wellknown politician in Colombia. He is a founder of political parties! He founded the "Let the Moreno Play Movement" (Movimiento Dejen Jugar al Moreno), and was elected senator in 2002. A strong supporter of Uribe, in 2006 - when Moreno was not elected - he was appointed ambassador to South Africa. He produced several scandals in his new role, and is back in Colombia now.

Ind December 2009 Moreno founded the Alianza Democrática Nacional, ADN, with politicians from the defunct party Colombia Viva. However, ADN was not admitted to register its candidates for election, as it was discovered that imprisoned "parapoliticians" had participated by videolink in the constituitive assembly. Thus Moreno (and several other candidates) continued to the Partido de Integración Nacional, PIN (see an earlier blogpost). Moreno was immediately welcomed - and insisted on being first name on the party list. No success, this time.

So now Carlos Moreno de Caro is back in the Conservative Party, and is registered as a candidate for Senate for this party with the rather uncommon conservative slogan: "The change continues!"

It is easy to dismiss Moreno as a political clown, a populist, an object of ridicule, a favourite for gossip journalists, an unreliable political ally. He is all of this. However, he can also be seen as a prototype of the egocentric Colombian politician, whose main motivation is not politics, but being elected.

There are many of these around, which explains also the large number of parties, very often with no social base at all. To a large extent the lack of social base and real party organisation is also the situation in more "traditional" parties. The political programmes (when they exist!) of most parties are extremely vague. Liberals may be conservative and almost socialist at the same time. Paramilitary sympathisers and peace activists in the same party. "Clean" Uribist candidates for the lower house may team up with Senate candidates with explicit parapolitical sympaties. Today I even saw a poster for a chamber candidate from one party combining with a wannabe senator from another!

My eurocentric gaze makes it rather difficult to navigate in this political chaos (sic!).