Illegal propaganda

These pictures from the streets of Córdoba ought not to show any propaganda for the elections in 2011 - for the simple reason that this is prohibited by law.

Article 24 in Law 130 of 1994 says it clearly: "Election propaganda may only take place during the three (3) months preceding the date of elections." Election propaganda is also defined, as "... propaganda made by parties, political movements and candidates to posts of popular elections, as well as by people who assist them, with the objective of obtaining electoral support." [My translation]

Three months, that means August, September and October - as elections are to be held 31 October. My snapshots were taken very recently, in early March, in the department of Córdoba.

The National Electoral Council [Consejo Nacional Electoral] 22 February 2011 issued a directive to all Mayors, Governors, local electoral authorities and all regional and municipal police authorities - reminding them of the rules and of their duty to take action should they encounter illegal propaganda.

I imagine that these candidates would reply that they are not doing party propaganda, they don't even mention their parties. They just 'happen' to use the colours of the Conservative and the Liberal parties, the PIN and the "U". One of the candidates was tempted though to write his surname CaLderón to show his affiliation with the Liberal party.

I noted with some satisfaction that one mayor in the region, in Cereté, last week announced that he would give five days to get rid of the unlawful propaganda. I think I will go there soon to have a look.

PS. 21 March 2011: A drunk friend (was it really?) of a local candidate lost control. But better end against the lamp post than the school building behind! The photo is from El Meridiano - which does not mention that Tato's car carries illegal propaganda.

Floods and fraud

When discussing elections in Colombia one frequent theme is election fraud. In last year's version of this blog I wrote a piece about some of the techniques in this genre. In an unusual attempt to be funny about serious fraud, the government published a fraud manual - quite good material!

Misión de Observación Electoral MOE is one of several organisations and institutions trying to keep an eye on the electoral process. MOE does this better than any public institution, simply because it is not corrupt, and it has little to gain by silence or deceit. During elections MOE observers also include a number of accredited international observers.* MOE now warns that the floods might increase the risk of fraud in the upcoming elections.

The local and regional elections in October will have more than 70 000 candidates. All of these will need to have their campaigns financed in one way or another. It is an impossible task to follow closely so many candidates, and from previous elections we know that even open and documented buying of votes remains impune. It is frustrating to listen to politicians defending their own violations of electoral legislation – but they do! According to the US embassy (Wikileaks!) ex-president Uribe did this quite on purpose in order to provoke the opposition and to be able to play the "victim card".

Back to the financing. In the 2010 elections for congress it turned out to be impossible to trace the amount, origin and use of campaign money. Although candidates are obliged to keep books on this, and to make them public, few do so. And usually there are no sanctions, as there are no legal instruments to follow up. Now, almost a year after the parliamentary elections in 2010 campaign finances have not yet been declared. I doubt that it will ever happen.

Candidates buy and sell. They sell alliances and promised contracts, in order go get sponsor money by which to buy votes so that they can fulfill their promises.

Floods and landslides have created a huge market for relief and reconstruction. Now, as candidates appear and election campaigns start, the government and NGOs are beginning to take action, having earmarked billions of pesos to solve some of the most urgent problems. Local candidates try to convince selected local contractors that they are the best to channel provide them with contracts - once they are elected mayors or council members. There are many bridges, schools, roads to rebuild - and many new 4-year service contracts to sign in the autumn. Thus, contractors gladly contribute to campaigns ... and very often they support candidates from opposing parties!

The floods and landslides October 2010 to January 2011 have resulted in millions of displaced Colombians. Their houses, schools, roads - complete villages were destroyed. They now live in terrible conditions, in plastic shelters, without access to clean water or sanitation, with very poor access to schools and health services. Poor, desperate people are easy victims of promises, and especially if these are accompanied by money or rewards in kind, 20 000 pesos [12 USD] or a bag of groceries would easily produce a vote.

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* I have been among the international observers in Colombia since the elections in 2007, representing the GUE/NGL group in the European Parliament.

Erase your enemies

One of the many, significant problems of elections in Colombia is the low voting rate. It usually stays below 50%, less that half of the registered voters actually vote. In some cases, as in recent regional elections in Bolívar, voter turnout might be as low as 10%.

There are many explanations to this state of affairs. Some say it is ignorance. Others claim that it is fear, or protest, or lack of confidence in the political candidates.

Everybody agrees that one cause is the low quality of registers. The registers used until now have included many who could not possibly vote: people who left the country many years ago, and also many deceased. This of course affects the turnout figure. However, ironically, it has partly been compensated by fraud. Thus, when voting lists are scrutinized, many of  the deceased seem to have voted!

In December 2010 the Colombian congress voted in favour of an electoral reform (Law 190) that will significantly reduce the number of eligible voters. Some claim that the reduction is a big as from 30 million to 15 million! This would, in theory, automatically improve turnout.

The reform is brutal. Colombians who have not recently renewed their ID-cards will be excluded from electoral rolls. So will prisoners, and members of the armed forces. These are debatable criteria, and they would be impossible in many democratic countries. Not so in Clombia. But the really interesting criterion for the right to vote is that one voted in the previous elections.

This means that 90% of voters in Bolívar would be excluded from voting in 2011. It also means that the 2010 abstentionists are excluded from voting. The only real opposition party in Colombia is the Polo Democratico Alternativo, PDA. PDA recommended abstention in the 2010 presidential elections - a perfectly legal option, and a democratic right, by which to express discontent. Those who followed the recommendation are now being erased from the electoral rolls.

It seems evident that this article 47 of the law violates the Colombian constitution. The law is not yet effective, as it has to be accepted by the - politically appointed - Constitutional Court. There is still some hope.

Warming up

In October this year the people of Colombia again will elect its governors, this year at local and regional levels. Campaigns have in practice already started in many places, as is the case in the capital Bogotá with its more than 7 million inhabitants. The picture shows some of the possible candidates for mayor of Bogotá. And yes, one is ex-president Uribe.

In other places potential candidates are still positioning themselves internally in party organisations, or trying to mobilise funds and friends in support of their candidacies. Plenty of posts have to be filled: mayors, municipal councils, departmental governors and parliaments.

It is about time that I get started again, then. I have no ambition to 'cover' the elections, but I will bring up and discuss some relevant themes, if possible with my own observations. Many interesting things happen in Colombia, deserving attention also outside of this country. Corruption, fraud, violence ... these are not Colombian but universal problems. The difference is that they are often bigger and easier to detect in Colombia.

One example: MOE (Misión de Observación Electoral) is an important NGO, a watchdog for elections which just published a study showing that 5% of the voters admit to have voted in exchange for money or goods. 25% say they know someone else who did this. These are high figures, especially as less than half of the eligible voters actually participate in elections. Thus it is likely that 10% of actual voters have sold their vote, or what?

An even more surprising (to me) result of the MOE study is that people with higher income and better education are less likely to vote than poor people with low level of education. How can that be?

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.