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Colombia Minor Third Parties
Although the amendments creating the National Front
limited
participation in the political process to the PC and the
PL, minor
parties were able to participate by filing as dissident
factions of
the two main parties. The two-party system
notwithstanding, all
parties were free to raise funds, field candidates, hold
public
meetings, have access to the media, and publish their own
newspapers. Smaller parties, which were generally class
oriented
and ideological, fielded candidates at all levels and
usually were
represented in Congress, departmental assemblies, and city
councils. Nevertheless, with the exception of the populist
National
Popular Alliance (Alianza Nacional Popular--Anapo; created
in 1961
by Rojas Pinilla) in the late 1960s and early 1970s, these
small
parties had few members and little impact on the political
system
(see Opposition to the National Front
, ch. 1).
Although the pro-Soviet Communist Party of Colombia
(Partido
Comunista de Colombia--PCC) regained its legal status in
1957 after
having been outlawed by Rojas Pinilla, the party did not
contest
elections during the National Front. Beginning in the
mid-1970s,
however, the PCC ran candidates in various legislative
elections,
as well as joint presidential candidates in alliance with
other
leftist groups. In 1974 the PCC, some Anapo dissidents,
and other
minor parties on the far left combined in the National
Opposition
Union (Unión Nacional de Oposición--UNO), but their
candidate for
president received less than 3 percent of the total vote.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas
Armadas
Revolucionarias de Colombia--FARC), the guerrilla arm of
the PCC,
sought to make its presence felt in the political process
through
a legal political party called the Patriotic Union (Unión
Patriótica--UP), which the FARC founded in May 1985 after
signing
a cease-fire agreement with the government
(see Guerrilla and Terrorist Groups
, ch. 5). In addition to representing the
FARC, the
UP coalition included the PCC and other leftist groups.
Using the
UP as its political front, the FARC participated in the
March 1986
local government and departmental assembly elections. The
UP's main
reform proposal was the opening of Colombia's tightly
controlled
two-party system to accept the UP as a third contender for
political power. The UP received only 1.4 percent of the
vote in
the elections, instead of an expected 5 percent.
Nevertheless, as
a result of the elections the UP could boast 14
congressional
seats, including one in the Senate, and more than 250
departmental
and municipal positions.
The UP's presidential candidate in the election of May
25,
1986, Jaime Pardo Leal--a lawyer and president of the
National
Court Workers Union (Unión Nacional de Trabajadores de las
Cortes--
UNTC)--placed third with about 350,000 votes, or 4.5
percent of the
total vote, winning Guaviare Commissaryship. Although it
was the
left's greatest electoral victory in Colombia's history,
observers
suspected that the FARC's use of terrorist tactics--such
as
kidnapping, extortion, blackmail, and
assassination--intimidated
many voters into voting for the UP. The UP made some gains
in the
March 1988 elections, but it won only 14 out of 1,008
mayoralties,
considerably fewer than expected. The UP victories, which
theoretically gave the UP legal jurisdiction over the
armed forces
and police in those districts, were in regions where the
FARC was
active.
The UP itself was a prime target of unidentified
"paramilitary"
groups. The UP claimed that by mid-1988 some 550 UP
members,
including Pardo Leal and 4 congressmen, had been murdered
since the
party's founding in 1985. In the six months preceding the
March
1988 elections, gunmen reportedly murdered more than 100
of the
UP's candidates for local office. According to the Barco
government's investigation, a major drug trafficker, José
Gonzalo
Rodríguez Gacha ("the Mexican"), sponsored Pardo Leal's
assassination, which took place on October 11, 1987. The
PCC
weekly, La Voz, published documents that allegedly
revealed
ties between Rodríguez and members of the armed forces,
and it
suggested that the military was linked to Pardo Leal's
murder. In
an April 1988 report on Colombia, Amnesty International
charged the
Colombian government and military with carrying out "a
deliberate
policy of political murder," not only of UP members but of
anyone
suspected of being a subversive. The Colombian government
strenuously denied this charge.
Another minor party was the Christian Social Democratic
Party
(Partido Social Democrática Cristiano--PSDC), founded in
May 1959
and composed mainly of students and a few workers. The
reformist
PSDC identified itself with the Christian democratic
movements that
had become political forces in other parts of Latin
America. The
PSDC candidate for president in 1974 received fewer than
16,000
votes, however. In 1982 the PSDC supported Betancur's
candidacy.
Data as of December 1988
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