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].