MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uribe poised for 2nd term

If there's such a thing as a safe bet in politics, it's that President Alvaro Uribe will be the winner in today's presidential elections in Colombia.

Leading his closest rival by 30 points in final pre-election polls, the law-and-order president appeared to be riding a strong Colombian economy toward a landslide that would eliminate the need for a second-round runoff. Even as leftist governments advance across the South American continent, the conservative 53-year-old has turned Colombia's election into a perfunctory vote of confidence.

The reasons are clear: security and the economy. Colombians are safer and the country feels wealthier than it did four years ago when Uribe, a staunch US ally, was first elected. His boosting of the armed forces has helped slash the notorious kidnapping and homicide rates down to a two-decade low. In a country where every family has been touched by violence, this has been gratefully noted. ??People now know they can travel around the country in safety, something that was impossible four years ago,'' said Carlos Trujillo, a sales manager who intends to vote for Uribe.

A final poll published in the national newspaper, El Tiempo, a week before the election put support for Uribe at 54.7 percent.

Candidate Carlos Gaviria trailed in a distant second with 24 percent, running for the leftist Alternative Democratic Pole party.

The 69-year-old senator and former head of Colombia's esteemed Constitutional Court once was Uribe's law professor at the University of Antioquia, in Medellin. Gaviria's campaign has picked up steam lately, but most of his gains came from the collapse of the once-mighty Liberal party, whose candidate Horacio Serpa was polling just 10 percent.

In 2002, Serpa lost to Uribe with 32 percent of the vote. A truly embarrassing result could spell disaster for the Liberal party, after a poor performance in March congressional elections when supporters of Uribe swept the Senate and Lower House.

Security analysts who initially predicted a massive offensive by leftist rebels as a means of defying Uribe's security policies, have called this the most peaceful election campaign in a decade. Colombians also feel their pockets are fuller.

Last year the economy grew more than five percent. Multinational companies such as Philip Morris International and Exxon Mobil Corp. that once shunned this war-ravaged economy are now sniffing for investment opportunities.

Unemployment has fallen by a third since Uribe took office, and inflation last year in this US$135 billion economy was at its lowest rate in a half century.

While popular, Uribe remains a polarizing figure, frequently criticized as authoritarian and intolerant of criticism. Opponents accuse him of weakening Colombia's institutions and concentrating power in the presidency.

??He thinks he's always right, so everything he does is the right thing, the methods can never be wrong. ... That's dangerous,'' said María Juliana Martinez, 26, a university professor who says she's voting for Gaviria, partly in protest against Uribe.

Rivals have sought to play up their plans for social spending, tapping a common criticism that Uribe has focused too much on security issues in a country rife with poverty. Despite coming from a wealthy landowning family and serving for decades in public office, Uribe has presented himself to Colombians as an outsider, running the country and demanding answers from the government on behalf of the common man.

Opposition candidates also have tried to capitalize on scandals afflicting the administration, ranging from accusations of voter fraud in the previous election to allegations that a close ally of the president ran the country's secret police at the behest of the country's drug-trafficking far-right paramilitaries, an accusation Uribe denies. Meanwhile, cartoonists have presented the bespectacled Uribe with a tarnished halo and a black eye, mocking the image of ethical purity he had campaigned on.

The allegations seem to have had little effect on the race. More than 80 percent of Colombians said the scandals wouldn't affect their vote.

??I think this is the press manipulating things here, bringing out these stories to hurt the president before the elections, and these stories are being taken advantage of by his political opponents,'' said Max-Steven Grossman, an artist who is planning to vote for Uribe. ??These scandals are really far from my day-to-day life.'' By Toby Muse - Bogota - Buenos Aires Herald