Cleaning up

There were a lot of murals, posters, billboards, graffiti in the election campaign. After the elections on 14 March, candidates and their parties have 30 days to clean up. In Montería the mayor seems to have reminded his mum about this, as her murals are among the first to be whitewashed. Nora García Burgos won her seat in the senate.

Hopefully other candidates will follow, but available public space will soon be maltreated again, by the campaigns of the presidential candidates. First round is in 9 weeks, on 30 May, and the campaign promises to be tough and dirty.

La FUERZA de un nuevo LIDER

Some of the billboards and mottos used in the election campaign have made me feel uneasy. One case is the motto used by Raymundo Méndez Bechara, now elected to the house of representatives from Córdoba. His billboards, posters and other material repeats "La FUERZA de un nuevo LIDER" [The POWER of a new LEADER]. I have not looked for an opportunity to ask him where he got the idea.

Méndez Bechara was elected to represent "La U", the biggest of the three right wing parties in the new congress majority. The party leader, Juan Santos is presidential candidate with a good chance of being elected. He has invited the former trade union leader Angelino Garzón to be his vice president, and he has today appointed rightwing Rodrigo Rivera Salazar to be in charge of the campaign. This is quite confusing, but perhaps a brilliant tactical draw: alliance with "leftist" Garzón and the hardliner lawyer Rivera. Until few days ago, Rivera was still a possible presidential candidate for PIN ("the party of the shadows").

Fragmented impressions help to build up an image of reality. The picture with Mussolini looking up and right, towards the light, seen from below with shadowy, strong chin. Some aesthetic similarity, I felt. The man on the colour poster is Morales Diz, just elected senator for "La U", in Córdoba. To focus on the visual impression, I erased the text from the poster. In the campaign, Morales Diz and Méndes Bechara have worked together.

As my thoughts continued to wander, I saw that the fascist motto from the Méndes Bechara propaganda fitted quite well with the image of Morales Diz. So I blended the two.

But I am completely wrong. Morales Diz is a nice man, I have been told. Well, he is on the list of suspects because of his ties to political "godmother" Zulema Jattin, an ex-senator condemned to 4 years imprisonment for parapolitics. During the paramilitary domininace in the region, Morales Diz was mayor in one of the stronghold municipalities, San Antero. The top commander of the paramilitary movement, Salvatore Mancuso, has pointed out Morales Diz as one of the locals under his control. But of course, Mancuso is probably a liar.

The inspiration for the poster photo is quite decent. It was not Mussolini, but Obama. But I am still curious about that motto: The POWER of a new LEADER – evidently doctor Méndez Bechara does not share my connotational patterns.

The victims have chosen their victimisers

I find it hard to understand how so many Colombians have decided to vote for so many known crooks, nepotists, clientilists, paramilitary sympathisers, corrupt persons as their parliamentary representatives for the next 4 years, 2010-1014.

The VoteBien [Vote well] site has looked at the newly elected parliament to see if things improved. Not all seats have been definitely distributed between parties, but the picture is quite clear. Things have not changed much.

Let's just look at the majority, now government coalition: Presiden Uribe's party "La U" with 27-28 seats, the conservative party with 23-24 seats, and the new PIN party with 8 seats.

VoteBien identified which of the newly elected senators are being investigated for serious crimes or were supported by close family or political "godfathers" that were condemned or involved in serious corruption or "parapolitics", i.e. collaboration with paramilitary groups.

The result is that of the 27-28 senators from "La U", 10 are in this obscure category. Of the 10 conservatives, 10. And of the 8 senators from the new PIN ("party of the shadows") 7 are dubious. Thus, of the 58 in the senate's government majority, 22 are really bad guys (and girls) – that is 38%.

"El cambio sigue" [The change continues] was the rather un-conservative motto of the conservative party. A common sarcastic comment is that it would have been more appropriate with "Más de lo mismo" [More of the same].

Impunity prevails

The two big parties of the government coalition are "La U" and the conservative party. From these parties come most of the members of parliament who have been investigated (and in many cases already convicted) for collaboration with paramilitary groups. These are the parapoliticos, or paracos. Of the 2006-10 parliament with in all 268 members, 85 are in this group. 32%! That is an impressive criminality rate – and most probably several guilty have escaped from being investigated. Imagine that, in Denmark or Sweden: more than 60 Danish members of parliament found guilty of paramilitary collaboration or corruption! Or more than 100 in Sweden!

One might believe (hope) that the electorate would punish these parties at the earliest opportunity. No so in Colombia. The two parties increased their number of seats in parliament. During the months before elections a new party PIN took care of the most dubious candidates, those that were not permitted to run for the conservatives or for "La U". PIN is often called the party of the shadows; for more about PIN, see a previous blogpost. Don't expect that the conservatives of "La U" will keep distance to PIN. On the contrary, all three parties will certainly collaborate and thus obtain a majority in both houses of the parliament.

The present government is often characterised as "centre-right". If the next president will belong to one of the majority parties, the government will probably be better described as "right-extreme right".

The counting of votes in yesterday's presidential preliminaries has still not finished. In the conservative party it will be a close run between "Uribito" Arias and Noemí Samín. Recounting is to be done in Bogotá and final results can be expected by the end of the week.

Crooks continue

Some few new and decent representatives have been elected to the Colombian Parliament. But the total picture is that the present government coalition continues in power, with the support of the new PIN party. PIN stands for Partido de Integración Nacional. Sarcastic critics think that it ought to be Paracos Intentan Nuevamente, i.e. Parapoliticians Intend agaiN.

So it seems, though now at midnight on election day I abstain from more comments. But I shall be back.

Violence

This map attempts to visualise the risks of violence in the 2010 elections. In "my" department, Córdoba, it was calculated that there was a medium-to-extreme risk of violence in 17 of 28 municipalities; with extreme risk in 6 of these.

Click on the map for a larger version.

You may want to compare these risks with another map mentioned on this blog, visualising risks of anomalies and irregularities. Frankly, I ought to have written: fraud.

Risk code: yellow=medium, orange=high, red=extreme.

The two maps show much overlap, i.e. to a large extent fraud and violence coexist.

The maps are results of research coordinated by MOE, the Misión de Observación Electoral. MOE is one of the organisations that also monitor the elections on Sunday 14 March with hundreds of observers, including many international observers from about 10 countries. I am one of them.

Also the Organization of American States (OAS) will be present with more than 100 observers. There is a big difference in the attitudes of these two organisations. The diplomats from OAS talk about Colombia's 200 years of "maintaining sound institutionalism". Almost funny, if it were not tragical hypocrisy.

The authorities are counting on 151.378 police and military to keep elections safe. It certainly is a big operation: 10.114 localities with 75.941 voting points (tables). These impressive figures from the national police command may frighten anyone from violent interventions in the formal voting process. There is still a possibility though, that guerilla groups from FARC or possibly ELN would attempt spectacular attacks – just to prove that they exist, that they have the force to break through these heavy security measures.

The real and quite omnipresent violence risk, however, is less dramatic for the outsider. It is represented by the many paramilitary and criminal gangs - thousands of armed, locally recognised young men who spread terror, to make people vote in a specific way, or to make them abstain. This terror is not so visible, and of course is not visible to the many military and police. It takes place before and after elections, in the villages and barrios, where observers from OAS never appear.

The kitten in Mompox

Magangué must be one of the ugliest towns in Colombia, situated on the shores of Rio Magdalena. It is very, very dirty. Everything seems to be falling apart. Many areas of the town do not have access to water. Waste water goes directly into the river. The town has been ruled for many years (well, not always formally) by the family of Enilse López, aka "La gata" [The cat]. This powerful woman is a criminal, condemned for corruption, extorsion, paramilitary collaboration and other bad things. She is serving her long prison sentence now, but has been permitted to do so in her private residence. Her son Jorge Luis Alfonso López (also condemned) was mayor 2004-2007, and the paramilitary connections with the public services exploded. Violence, clientilism, nepotism became daily routine. Later, the ex-mayor has been prohibited from holding any public office for 20 years. These are really bad guys, and they are not defeated.

Mangangué these days is completely plastered with murals, banners, posters, billboards in favour of another son of La gata, Hector Julio Alfonso López, nicknamed El gatico [The kitten]. He is candidate to the Colombian senate. National and regional newspapers report on the massive buying of votes on his behalf. It is a shame, but fear and poverty makes it probable that this López will get plenty of votes.

López is heavily promoted not only in Magangué, but in the whole province and beyond. Also in villages small fortunes have been used to paint walls in favour of this "Esperanza de un pueblo" [Hope of a people], the motto used by Lopez. A real nightmare!

Then, not so far from the ugly Magangué, I arrive at Mompox - one of the oldest towns in Colombia, founded in 1537. The historic centre of Mompox is beatiful, calm, friendly and peaceful.



It took me a while to find out why the peace of Mompox was even more impressive this time. Then I realised that it was the absence of election propaganda. No giant standardised murals, (almost) no posters with their dishonestly retouched photos, no stupid mottos. Mompox respects that in 1995 its historic centre was declared Unesco World Heritage.

Then a wellknown face appears, that of El gatico López. His local fans have found a way around the rules (as they usually do): they show his poster in the windows of a private house.

My photographic interest made some people stop to ask. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry this Sunday morning. A small discussion followed and I asked the neighbour would she vote for El gatico? Noooo! Then somehow appeared the joke that here in Mompox the candidate was already where be belonged, behind bars. Roars of laughter, and smiling we continued in our various directions.

An honest man

This candidate from Cambio Radical [Radical Change] does not promise too much with his motto: "Una cámara que no se venda es posible ..." [A House which is not for sale is possible ...].

The house referred to is the House of Representatives in the Colombian parliament.

Federico Arango blogs jokingly about all the special competencies needed for an election campaign. T-shirt-makers, cooks, billboard-builders and motto-constructors. Mottos, however, says Arango, could be produced by the right software. You just enter some adjectives like transparent, efficient, dedicated, modern, young ... and some substantives: leadership, power, front, 21st century, passion. The cost depends on how much you enter.

I doubt that Varón's depressing slogan could have been created that easily. But Arleth Casado's motto "Siempre con todos" [Always with everyone] certainly could. And cheap, too.

Who rules? Plutocrats!

plutocracy - [plōō-tŏḱrə-sē]
(n.) Government by the wealthy.
(n.) A wealthy class that controls a government.
(n.) A government or state in which the wealthy rule.

So far dictionary.com. We all know it of course, from Domhoff's "Who Rules America" to the extensive investigations on "Power and democracy" ('Maktutredningen') in Norway and Sweden during the 1980's and 1990's. Money rules. And we know it from our daily experiences, from what we see and read.

In northern Europe, power is usually quite discreet with its money. Showing off is regarded as bad taste. Not so in the Colombian election campaign — and, frankly, showing off wealth is what many wealthy people do in Colombia. "Esse non videri", to act and not be seen, that would not be a probable motto here, as it was for a Wallenberg in Sweden a few decades ago.

I have devoted some posts to the role money plays in the present campaign: Buying and selling votes, 450,000,000.00 COP, Franchising and other tricks. In those notes I outlined some of the ways money is used to manipulate elections.

However, not all politicians are that rich. And a lot of money is needed to secure the outcome. I have mentioned the 450 million pesos (USD 230,000) permitted for a candidate for the senate to spend on campaigning. Since then I have learned that in some areas 2, 5, or 10 times as much is used. Not publicly of course, as that would be illegal, but in practice. Which is quite as illegal, but hidden.

The Constitutional Court recently proved that the campaign for a referendum to allow president Uribe to be reelected for a third period had spent 30 times the allowed amount!

In the Bolívar department the mafiosa Enilse "La gata" Lopez now offers 60-100,000 pesos for a vote on her son "El gatico" Hector Julio for senator. That is 2-4 times more than today's standard rate for votes.

But where does all this money come from? It has been documented how the referendum campaign was financed. The case with "La gata" and her son is familiar (literally). But these are exceptions. When asked, other candidates speak about savings, friends and family, loans in the bank, etc. And still, they only speak of the legal part — only a fraction of the real expenditure. The truth is obviously somewhere else.

The weekly Semana has made repeated efforts to trace the money flow. There are several sources, one very important being money from drug trafficking. Thus also the next Congress will be populated with many representatives and senators that have depended on drug cartels or smuugglers, or other criminal groups, to be elected. Several of these coming members of congress can be identified beforehand — but these dark networks are difficult to document, especially when so many in the juridical system are also on the same payrolls.

An exemplary case: The mayor in 'my' regional capital is a conservative, rather young man. Let's call him García. The town council sometimes opposes the mayor's dispositions, as it did recently when the mayor wanted the council immediately to authorise him to sign some large and not well prepared construction contracts. A huge lot of money. The council chairman was directly threatened, his wife would be taken hostage, the chairman was prevented from leaving the town hall, and so on. But why the rush?

It so happens that the local conservative candidate for senate is Ms García - the mayor's mother.

If you don't see the connection ... well, I did not, until the council chairman explained to me. I know him quite well. As things developed, the mayor got his authorisation — and he can now negotiate and sign some big contracts for public works. In an earlier post I mentioned that the government's zar anticorrupción has estimated the bribes for such works to an average of 12,9%. My friend thinks that in this part of the country it is rather more. Let's stay at 15%. Thus, if Mr García signs some contracts for a small housing development with intrastructure of roads, sewage etc. of USD 10 million, there will be USD 1,5 million available for other purposes. That is 2,891,100,046 Colombian pesos at today's rate. Well spent that might be sufficient to secure a seat in the new senate.

Of course, such money will never appear in the campaign accounts. Nor will it be mentioned in any contract. But Mr Garcia's lawyers will speak to the contractors' lawyers and agree upon exactly what parts of Ms Garcia's campaign they will pay for: vehicles, billboards, salaries for campaign workers, gift packages to audiences at meetings in villages and barrios, t-shirts with Ms García and the motto: El cambio sigue! [The change continues!]. It would have been more correct with: Más de lo mismo! [More of the same!].

This is clientilism in a nutshell. In most cases though, the investor's risk is higher — here we had an already elected mayor as one of the parties. The risk is higher of course when you support a candidate who might lose.

A previously uncommon phenomenon has appeared in these Colombian elections. Some wealthy contractors support several candidates, from different parties. Thus they are pretty sure to end up on the winner's side — and to claim their reward after elections. Perhaps this is the deeper truth of the slogan used by liberal (??) candidate Arleth Casado: Siempre con todos! [Always with everyone!]. That pays.

Photo montage from Semana.com