Colombia Post-National Front Political Developments
Street vendor in Cali
Courtesy Lloyd W. Mansfield
With the return to normal interparty competition in the
April
1974 presidential elections and the 1976 local elections,
the PL's
popular superiority enabled it to capture the presidency,
a large
working majority in Congress, and majorities in many of
the
departmental assemblies and municipal councils. Alfonso
López
Michelsen--the PL candidate in the 1974 presidential
elections and
the son of former President Alfonso López Pumarejo (in
office 1934-
38 and 1942-45)--won with 55 percent of the popular vote,
easily
defeating Conservative candidate Gómez Hurtado.
Despite a low voter turnout of 34 percent in the
February 1978
congressional elections, the Liberals and Conservatives
maintained
their total dominance, winning 305 of the 311
congressional seats.
The PL again won majorities in both houses. The PL
supporters of
Julio César Turbay, who was closely linked to López
Michelsen
(1974-78), received more than 1.5 million votes, as
compared with
800,000 for supporters of Carlos Lleras Restrepo, a highly
respected former Liberal president (in office 1966-70).
Turbay
narrowly defeated the Conservative candidate Betancur in
the June
1978 presidential elections, in which only 39 percent of
the
electorate voted. Turbay was elected president with 49.5
percent of
the vote, as compared with Betancur's 46.6 percent. Thus,
the
second post-National Front president was also a Liberal
who had the
backing of his predecessor. In the National Front
tradition,
however, Turbay appointed five Conservatives to his
thirteen-member
cabinet.
Shortly after taking office in August 1978, Turbay was
faced
with the most serious guerrilla threat in decades. He
strengthened
his state of siege powers by decreeing the harsh National
Security
Statute, giving the police and military greater authority
to deal
with the growing domestic social unrest and political
violence. The
Turbay government used this statute to help minimize the
security
threats posed by the guerrilla and terrorist groups. The
human
rights situation deteriorated seriously, however, and
armed
opposition mounted dramatically.
Although the Liberals maintained majorities in both
houses in
the March 1982 congressional elections, Betancur won the
presidency
in May 1982, owing to growing dissatisfaction with the
eight years
of Liberal rule, a split within the majority PL between
two
candidates, and Conservative backing of his candidacy. The
PL
division allowed for the first Conservative victory in
fully
competitive presidential elections since 1946. Defeating
López
Michelsen by almost 400,000 votes, Betancur garnered 46.5
percent
of the vote, with 54 percent of the electorate abstaining.
A militant follower of Laureano Gómez's ultra-right
wing of the
PC in the 1950s and early 1960s, Betancur moved to the
political
center after Gómez died in 1965. He first ran for
president in 1970
as an independent Conservative and again in 1978 as a
moderate
reformer. He ran in the 1978 elections as a candidate of
the
National Movement (Movimiento Nacional), consisting of
Conservatives, dissident Liberals, Christian Social
Democrats, and
remnants of Anapo. Betancur owed his decisive 1982 victory
for the
National Movement in part to the support of the
alvarista
and pastranista-ospinista factions of the PC, as
well as of
independent Christian democratic and Liberal voters,
especially
among the urban poor and working class in the large cities
(see Factionalism
, this ch.). López Michelsen, one of the two
PL
candidates, had called for rescinding the constitutional
clause on
coalition governments so that the two traditional parties
could
compete with each other more effectively. For the first
time in
Colombia's electoral history, modern campaign techniques
prevailed
over the traditional reliance on party machinery and the
informal
patronage and brokerage system.
During his four-year term, Betancur's highest domestic
priority
was to pacify Colombia's four main guerrilla groups. His
approach
to dealing with the escalating political violence differed
profoundly from that pursued by his hard-line predecessor.
After
his inauguration in August 1982, Betancur called for a
democratic
opening (abertura democrática), an end to Turbay's
repressive policies, a truce with the guerrilla groups,
and an
unconditional general amnesty for the guerrillas. By
August 1984,
the Betancur government's peace commission had reached
short-term
accords with most of the major guerrilla groups, with the
main
exception of the pro-Cuban National Liberation Army
(Ejército de
Liberación Nacional--ELN). In June 1985, however, the
peace process
began to unravel when the 19th of April Movement
(Movimiento 19 de
Abril--M-19) resumed fighting, followed by other groups.
Only the
FARC agreed to renew its truce, although not all of its
guerrilla
fronts complied.
Despite his more open, informal, and honest leadership
style--a
sharp contrast with that of the more pompous and
tradition-bound
Turbay--Betancur's popularity declined markedly because of
persistent problems with inflation and deficits
(see Inflation and Unemployment
, ch. 3). This made it difficult to finance
the
ambitious social, political, and electoral reforms that he
had
promised. In the 1984 mid-term elections, the
Conservatives
received only 42 percent of the vote, which was about
their usual
proportion, and the Liberals received 58 percent.
Betancur's policy
toward the guerrillas was a principal factor in
undermining
confidence in him among many military, economic, and
political
leaders, including Conservative congressmen. The M-19
dealt
Betancur's prestige and his strategy of national
pacification a
severe blow by seizing the Palace of Justice, which housed
the
Supreme Court and Council of State, in early November
1985. The M-
19's action reinforced a widely held view among Colombians
that
Betancur had ceded too much to the guerrillas in his quest
for
peace. Betancur's handling of the courthouse takeover
polarized
public opinion within all sectors
(see Interest Groups
, this ch.).
It also generated Colombian criticism of Betancur's role
within the
Contadora (see Glossary)
group of Latin American countries
seeking
to negotiate a peace settlement in Central America,
particularly
after the M-19 arms used in the takeover were traced to
Nicaragua
(see Relations with Latin America
, this ch.).
The decisive campaign issue leading up to the
congressional and
local government elections in March 1986 and the
presidential
elections in May 1986 was the candidates' positions
regarding
public order. Even with half of Colombia's 14 million
voters
abstaining, the congressional elections held on March 9,
1986,
produced a record voter turnout. The poll amounted to a
vote of no-
confidence for the lame-duck Betancur administration,
which
received only 37.4 percent of the vote. The opposition PL
swept
48.7 percent of the vote, including Bogotá, thereby giving
the
party a majority in both houses.
In the May 1986 presidential election, PL candidate
Virgilio
Barco, a close associate of Turbay, won a landslide
victory over
Gómez Hurtado, the Conservative candidate. Barco received
the
largest mandate in Colombia's history, with 58 percent
(4.1
million) of the vote, as compared with Gómez's 36 percent
(2.5
million). Barco won in twenty-one of Colombia's
twenty-three
departments, even taking the Conservative stronghold of
Antioquia
Department. As a former minister of agriculture (1962-64)
and mayor
of Bogotá (1966-69), Barco had gained a reputation as a
skillful
public administrator. His election was helped not only by
endorsements from four former Liberal presidents--Alberto
Lleras
Camargo (1945-46; 1958-62), Lleras Restrepo, López
Michelsen, and
Turbay--but also by fears of a spread in public violence
following
Betancur's failure to pacify the country's guerrilla
movements and
his liberal reforms of the penal system.
On assuming office on August 7, 1986, Barco confirmed
his
intention to end the thirty-year-old tradition of
coalition
governments by establishing a one-party government
(gobierno de
partido). He believed that the sharing of cabinet
seats and
other government posts under the old National Front
arrangement
stifled democracy by excluding other groups and making it
difficult
to distinguish the policies of the two main parties. Barco
favored
a more conventional system in which the winning party
governed and
the losing party served as a genuine opposition. Although
Barco
offered the Conservatives three cabinet positions in his
administration in accordance with Article 120 of the
Constitution,
Conservative patriarch and former President Pastrana
declined the
token participation in order to "revitalize" the party's
identity.
The Conservatives declared themselves in "reflective
opposition" to
the Barco administration. Thus, Barco's Council of
Ministers was
the first one-party cabinet in almost three decades.
Barco outlined a program to end guerrilla violence and
crime
through social reforms, a reduction in poverty, and an
effective
judiciary. He inherited Betancur's battered peace
initiative, which
Barco perceived to be fatally flawed, and began his
mandate with
the country still under a state of siege. Although the
Barco
administration committed itself to the peace process
initiated by
Betancur, Barco deemphasized dialogue with the guerrillas
and--in
October 1987--centralized the peace program in his office
by making
his new peace commission--the Permanent Advisory Council
on
Political Rehabilitation, Reconciliation, and
Normalization--an
intergovernmental body. Government talks with the FARC
made little
progress, however, owing to the FARC's unwillingness to
disarm and
its continued guerrilla and terrorist attacks.
By the end of Barco's first year in office, analysts
were
criticizing him for being indecisive, too low key, and
inaccessible. Barco reportedly communicated mostly with
his closest
advisers, consulting infrequently with his ministers. His
controversial effort to make the political system more
competitive
floundered from the start. Despite the novel existence of
a
'purely' opposition party and the Conservatives' efforts
to create
an effective opposition, the two parties had few
ideological and
political differences. Consequently, instead of a system
of checks
and balances, the government--in the opinion of
analysts--was
experiencing administrative chaos. Pro-Barco critics
accused the
Conservatives of impeding congressional action and
harassing the
executive branch over the performance of various
ministers, instead
of offering clear-cut alternatives to the government's
program.
They also scolded the Liberals for failing to take
advantage of
their electoral majority to govern the country forcefully
and to
carry out needed social reforms. The broader effects
included
deterioration of the peace process and increasing
polarization and
confrontation between the army and the guerrillas, with
both
getting stronger.
Although the Liberals won a majority of the votes in
the March
elections, the opposition Social Conservative Party
(Partido Social
Conservador--PSC) won an important victory over the
governing PL by
taking the mayoralties of Colombia's two largest cities:
Bogotá and
Medellín. Andrés Pastrana, the son of former President
Misael
Pastrana, became Bogotá's mayor, Colombia's second most
important
political position. Pastrana had been trailing in
published voter
polls until he was kidnapped in January, reportedly by
drug
dealers. The kidnapping of another top politician, the
PSC's Alvaro
Gómez, on May 29 pushed Colombian politics into a crisis.
Gómez had
been actively pressuring the ruling PL to give the
military more
power to combat the growing guerrilla threat. During the
two months
that the M-19 held Gómez, political analysts noted the
polarizing
effect the abduction was having on Colombians.
By early 1988, as the security situation continued to
deteriorate nationwide, Barco came under increasing
pressure to
return to a national governing coalition similar to the
old
National Front. Politicians and diplomats in Bogotá
reportedly
believed that such an arrangement was needed to reassert
legitimate
authority and reach new accords on some basic issues,
including new
approaches to the guerrilla groups, cocaine traffickers
(the
Medellín and Cali cartels), and relations with the United
States.
In May 1988, Barco and the PL leadership reached an
agreement
on a legislative agenda for constitutional and
institutional
reform. The reform package, consisting of about
thirty-five bills,
was designed to modernize the state in areas such as
administration
of justice, legislative efficiency, streamlining of public
administration, and the state of siege provision in the
Constitution (Article 121). The latter would be divided
into three
phases to be invoked gradually, depending on the national
crisis
situation. Each phase would call for different, measured
responses
by the state. Other measures called for the formation of a
constitutional court to rule on the validity of treaties;
another
would restrict the attorney general's office to ruling
only on
human rights matters; and others would give constititional
status
to the protection of human rights, provide for mandatory
voting and
voter registration, and legalize the use of the plebiscite
vote to
consult the voters on key issues.
Data as of December 1988
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