El analysis de La Silla Vacía:

La consulta Verde podría llegar a millón y medio. Superaría la votación de la consulta liberal que sacó un millón de votos, triplicaría la consulta del Polo y sería más o menos la mitad de la consulta conservadora. Una votación impresionante dado que tienen una maquinaria muy pequeña representada por algunos candidatos del viejo partido Opción Centro; esta votación es mayoritariamente voto de opinión.

En principio, entran al Senado cuatro candidatos, probablemente cinco: Gilma Jiménez es la mayor votación, el ex gobernador de Boyacá Jorge Eduardo Londoño, Félix José Valera, John Sudarsky y Wilfrido Uzuriaga están adentro. Y a la Cámara, entrarían por lo menos dos: Alfonso Prada y Angela María Robledo.

“Cada momento histórico tiene un candidato que simboliza la necesidad”, explica el analista Héctor Riveros, que les está ayudando a los Verdes. “Mockus podría simbolizar la reacción al relajamiento moral, a la parapolítica, a las chuzadas, al voten antes de irse a la cárcel, al le pego en la jeta, marica”.

Se defina o no la campaña alrededor del tema de la moralidad política, Mockus arranca mañana con un impulso que no tenía. Personas que pensaban antes que votar por él era perder el voto lo pensarán dos veces. El Verde le arrebató al Polo su sector más progresista y Mockus se convierte en una alternativa real para quienes quieren un rumbo realmente distinto para el país fundado en otro tipo de valores.

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Same But Different Results in Colombia’s Congressional Elections
Colombians too went to the polls on Sunday to elect a new Congress and to select two Presidential candidates in a primary. The contest was seen an indicator of electoral strength in advance of the Andean country’s Presidential elections scheduled for May 30th.

Some 14 million, out of 28 million registered Colombians, turned out to vote in an election that was peaceful but marred by allegations of vote buying and other intimidation in rural districts in the Caribbean littoral savannah and in Amazonia. By Colombian Congressional election standards, that’s a high voter turnout. Normally, it’s around 40 percent for Congressional elections and near 60 percent for presidential ones.

Parties tied to outgoing President Alvaro Uribe did very well winning a large plurality in both houses of Congress. The official Uribe party, el Partido Social de la Unidad Social – known simply as La U – won 27 Senate seats down from 31 but overall the Uribe coalition won 60 Senate seats up from 50 in the outgoing Senate. The Colombian Senate has 102 members who are elected nationally in a list voting. The biggest winner of the night was the Conservative Party whose political fortunes are seemingly on the rise after failing to even nominate a presidential candidate in the 2006 elections. They held their 23 Senate seats.

The other party that is informally part of the Uribe coalition that did well is the Partido de Integración Nacional (PIN) which won 8 percent of the vote and 8 Senate seats despite that 67 of its members are under investigation for links to para-militarism and narco-politics. This is a party that is controlled by regional caciques in rural areas particularly in the country’s northern Caribbean littoral savannah and a party that is inherently corrupt. Their performance is indicative of how far the country still has yet to travel in its efforts to turn the corner on its past and points yet again that the fundamental problem in Colombian politics remains the influence of those tied to in one or another to drug trafficking. It is deeply troubling and embarrassing to me personally that the fourth largest political force in my native Colombia is built upon such a nexus of evil.

A New Hope Emerges
The Colombian Green Party, el Partido Verde, formed last October did very well winning 5 percent of the vote nationally and sweeping in Bogotá, the country’s capital and largest city. The Green Party won at least four Senate seats, perhaps 5 when all is said and done, in its first electoral contest and is now poised to become a player in Colombian politics. The party also held a primary to decide its presidential nominee choosing between three former progressive mayors of Bogotá. The winner with about 55 percent of the vote was Antanas Mockus, the academic turned politician. He is expected to name Lucho Garzón, the most leftist of the three tenors as the former mayors are called, as his running mate.

The Greens ran very unusual campaign. They did not campaign individually but as a group. At every rally, each of the three men appeared to demonstrate that the campaign was one of ideas and not personalities. The Greens did especially well in the urban areas and very poorly in rural ones.

The Also Rans
For the Colombian Liberal Party, the elections are a mixed bag. Once the majority party, they won just 18 percent of the vote but remain the largest opposition party. Their share of the vote has been decimated by defections not just to the Uribist factions (Alvaro Uribe hails from the Liberal party) but also other dissidents such as Germán Vargas Lleras’ Cambio Radical party which won 8 percent of the vote that translates into 9 Senate seats and seems poised to make a serious run in the upcoming Presidential elections. Vargas Lleras, the grandson of a much beloved former President, leads an independent movement that supports Uribe’s security policies but not his economic ones. His choice for Vice President was Elsa Noguera, a 37 year old economist from Barranquilla who is also handicapped.

The hard left faltered. The Polo Democrático Alternativo (PDA), a group that counts many former guerrillas, saw its share of the vote fall to just 10 percent, down from 22 percent just four years. The head of the party, Jaime Dussán, resigned this morning in the wake of the defeat. Dussán a fixture in the Colombian Senate since 1998 also lost his seat. The other big loser of the night was Sergio Fajardo, the former mayor of Medellín, who has been mounting an independent civic campaign for the presidency. His lists failed to win 2 percent of the vote, embarrassingly coming behind the Colombian evangelical party MIRA which won 2.5% percent. Neither Fajardo nor the MIRA made the threshold for a Senate seat.

Late Night Drama: The Conservative Primary
The five person Conservative primary was a two person race between Noemí Sanín, a former Foreign Minister and a long-standing politician of note, and Andrés Felipe Arias, a former Minister of Agriculture who at 38 has positioned himself as the most loyal of Uribe’s henchmen. Known as “Uribito” – or little Uribe, Arias has promised to meticulously follow Uribe’s policies if elected and perhaps even have Uribe serve in the Cabinet.

The contest between Sanín and Arias for the Conservative nomination remains as of this hour undecided. At one point last night just three votes separated the two. Arias, incidentally, was unable to vote due to a registration mishap. For most of the night, Arias led though the vote difference was no more than three thousand at any one point despite over 3 million ballots casted in this primary. By early morning, Sanín had pulled ahead by some 5,000 votes with 93 percent of electoral tables reporting.

A Ballot Disaster
At last count, ten percent of all ballots have been declared invalid. Not surprising, I found the ballot extremely confusing and soiled one of the three so much that I had to ask for another one. The paper ballot was different from the ones we have long used in the country which clearly differentiate the various party lists. Instead this ballot lacked the usual marks of distinction as well as the customary photographs of the candidates and grouped three separate elections onto one ballot. Colombia reserves seats for members of ethnic minorities such as indigenous groups and Afro-Colombians and traditionally these are elected apart by members of those constituencies. In this election, the Colombian Electoral Registry used one ballot for all three elections causing undue confusion. Ten percent of ballots cast aside is simply unacceptable and taints the election.

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Voters in Colombia are heading to the polls to elect new legislators.

And one of the 2,500 candidates for congress is Francisco Javier Lozano Neiva – who belongs to a party called “PAIS” – composed mostly of social leaders and indigenous groups.

He had to flee his home in 2005 after paramilitaries attacked his town, committing a massacre of civilians.

And now the experience is pushing Neiva to try to stop the cycle of violence and political corruption in Colombia

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Según informa La W Radio en su sitio web, se conoció en exclusiva que los magistrados de la Corte Constitucional declararon inexequible el referendo que buscaba que los ciudadanos colombianos decidieran sobre una segunda reelección del presidente Álvaro Uribe.

La W afirma asimismo, que en pocos minutos el presidente de la Corte Constitucional, magistrado Mauricio González, dará a conocer los motivos por los que el Tribunal declaró inconstitucional la iniciativa.

Las cifras manejadas por el medio colombiano, la votación habría sido de 7 votos a favor y 2 en contra.

Radio Caracol también afirma, según sus fuentes, que la decisión final de la Corte Constitucional de Colombia en negar el referendo por la reelección de Álvaro Uribe Vélez.

Jamás estoy de orgulloso de ser colombiano como hoy. Somos un país de leyes. Se honora a Francisco Paula de Santander, el fundador de la República, que las leyes están por encima de un hombre.

Se le agradece al Presidente Uribe su servicio a la nación pero ni la constitución ni nuestras tradiciones políticas permiten una re-elección. En el 2005 se le cedió un excepción. No entendió lo extraordinario de ese momento y sus seguidores creían poder perpetuarlo en el poder. Esa fue la tragedia de Álvaro Uribe Vélez.

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Between 2003 and 2006, more than 30,000 militia members in Colombia were de-mobilized. Human Rights Watch has said that de-mobilization has been flawed and that violent successor groups operate in three-quarters of Colombia’s departments. In conjunction with photographer Stephen Ferry, Human Rights Watch profiles three men who have received death threats.

Daljit Dhaliwal of World Focus speaks with Maria McFarland, Deputy Washington Advocacy Director of Human Rights Watch on the report.

In a Human Rights Watch report released earlier this month, the Washington-based organization documents widespread and serious abuses by successor groups to the paramilitary coalition known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC).

According to HRW the successor groups regularly commit massacres, killings, forced displacement, rape, and extortion, and create a threatening atmosphere in the communities they control. Often, they target human rights defenders, trade unionists, victims of the paramilitaries who are seeking justice, and community members who do not follow their orders.

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On January 19th, Ambassador Carolina Barco of Colombia addressed an audience at NDN and the New Policy Institute about advancements in Colombia and progress in their relationship with the United States.

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Para hundir el referendo, el grupo de Alianza Ciudadana por la Democracia le recetó ConstituTrón 91 a la Corte Constitucional. Se trata de un medicamento que, según sus creadores, contiene democrasina de alta pureza y equilibrina de poderes. Con este “reconstituyente primario” y una intervención ciudadana en contra del referendo reeleccionista, el grupo de ex constituyentes del 91, académicos, artistas, estudiantes y ONG, busca que la Corte declare la inexequibilidad de la ley que permite la re-reelección a partir de 2010.

Conozca cuál fue la estrategia de Alianza Ciudadana por la Democracia para defender la Constitución de 1991 y atacar el referendo re-eleccionista.

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La revista colombiana Semana informa:

Un intenso debate este miércoles en la universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano puso contra la pared al presidente de la República, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, quien recibió duros cuestionamientos de respetados académicos como la politóloga Claudia López, la decana Natalia Springer, el docente Fabián Sanabria y el rector de la universidad José Fernando Isaza.

Los videos son cortesía de la Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano.

Dr. José Fernando Isaza, Rector de la Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano
El rector de la Universidad, José Fernando Isaza, cuestionó el Estado de opinión que defiende el presidente Uribe y criticó fuertemente su intención de un tercer mandato. El mandatario colombiano respondió diciendo que no hay que confundir el Estado de opinión, con el Estado de opresión.

Dra. Claudia López, Analista y Politóloga
La politóloga y analista Claudia López, le increpó al Presidente su autoridad moral porque la mayoría de congresistas uribistas están en la cárcel o investigados por parapolítica.

Dr. Fabián Sanabria, Profesor asociado de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Departamento de Sociología
El docente Fabián Sanabria defendió la autonomía y el libre pensamiento dentro de las universidades y le pidió al presidente que no vincule a los estudiantes universitarios como informantes de la Fuerza Pública. Uribe insistió en que es un deber ciudadano cooperar.

Señor Presidente de la República, Alvaro Uribe Vélez
El presidente Uribe aseguró que él no tiene “rabo de paja” y retó a los contertulios a que le dieran casos de su supuesta debilidad o complicidad con el narcotráfico, paramilitarismo y corrupción. Natalia Springer, decana de la Facultad de Relaciones Internacionales, le citó el ejemplo del hermano del ministro del Interior y de Justicia, Fabio Valencia Cossio, preso por vínculos con paramilitares y el rector Isaza trajo a colación a Jorge Noguera, ex director del DAS, también señalado por vínculos con jefes paramilitares.

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The background from the Knight Center:

El Tiempo, the country’s largest daily, publicly and without warning fired prominent political scientist Claudia López, a critic of President Álvaro Uribe and one of the paper’s most read columnists, BBC Mundo reports.

According to the editors, López’s last column, which questioned the paper’s editorial independence, served as a letter of resignation, Semana explains. López had criticized El Tiempo’s coverage of an agricultural subsidy scandal, saying the paper may have skewed reporting to benefit possible presidential candidate Juan Manuel Santos, a former editor and member of the family that owns a large stake in the company.

López told BBC Mundo that she feels “censored.” She didn’t question the decision to fire her, but the way it was done. Her dismissal prompted an avalanche of support and an intense freedom of expression debate that has spread to Twitter and Facebook, Semana adds in another article. The digital edition of El Tiempo has received more than a thousand comments.

Columnist Cecilia Orozco suggests in El Espectador that the severity of the incident is worrying, especially since El Tiempo editor Enrique Santos, Juan Manuel’s brother, is President of the Inter American Press Association, which advocates for free expression in the continent.

And here’s the report from The Center for International Policy’s Colombia Program:

“El Tiempo rejects Claudia López’s statements as false, badly intentioned, and slanderous. The Directorship of this daily understands her strong criticism of our journalistic work to be a resignation letter, which we immediately accept.”

This is the testy, thin-skinned postscript that El Tiempo, Colombia’s most-circulated daily newspaper, added to the bottom of this morning’s column from Claudia López, whose Tuesday missives have consistently been among the paper’s most read and most commented contributions.

The columnist and think-tank researcher, who is spending this semester as a World Fellow at Yale University, is known for being a tenacious and outspoken investigator, and gets some credit for breaking the “para-politics” scandal in 2006. Her column has made her one of President Álvaro Uribe’s fiercest and best-known critics. We have cited her on a few occasions.

So what did Ms. López write that caused El Tiempo to give her the boot? She chose to turn her sights on the newspaper itself. She argued that El Tiempo has used the “Agro Ingreso Seguro” (AIS) scandal (the subject of Friday’s post), in which an agricultural subsidy program gave large sums of cash to some of the country’s largest landholders, to benefit the presidential aspirations of a family member.

“Unlike other written media, El Tiempo did not dig deeper into the AIS program, focusing only on the scandal’s political effects,” writes López, noting that the scandal was, however, broken by the weekly magazine Cambio, which is owned by El Tiempo.

But López goes on to argue that El Tiempo’s focus on the scandal’s political effects sought to harm the prospects of one 2010 presidential aspirant – former Agriculture Minister Andrés Felipe Arias – and explicitly to help another possible candidate, former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos. (Both Arias and Santos have said that they will run in 2010 only if President Uribe is unable to run for a third term.)

López backs up the allegation of favoritism by citing a web forum on eltiempo.com, an article about comments in the forum, and a political analysis article contending, without citing poll data, that “Andrés Felipe Arias emerges weakened and Juan Manuel Santos is strengthened by the AIS scandal.”

Using subtle tools like a web forum and “political analyses” to benefit one candidate is a common charge leveled against media everywhere. But in this case, the candidate allegedly benefiting, Juan Manuel Santos, is a member of the family that owns El Tiempo. (Actually, since a 2007 sale to Spain’s Grupo Planeta, the Santos family shares control of the newspaper.) Candidate Santos is also a former editor at the newspaper.

López’s accusation is serious and documented, and her attack is strong.

El Tiempo’s journalistic quality is ever more compromised by the growing conflict of interests between its commercial purposes (to win a third television channel) and political purposes (to cover the Government that provides this channel, and its partner in the campaign), and its journalistic duties.

In this morning’s coverage, Claudia López accused El Tiempo’s management of benefiting a relative’s political aspirations, and demanded that it itself. Instead of an explanation, she was publicly fired.

This is extremely disappointing from a newspaper whose prominence in Latin America would lead one to expect that its columnists could cover any topic they choose. A newspaper whose editorial staff includes Enrique Santos, the current first vice-president of the Inter-American Press Association, a prominent press freedom association. And a newspaper that, every week, publishes the often hilarious fabrications of José Obdulio Gaviria, a far-right figure who until recently was one of President Uribe’s principal advisors.

Claudia López has lost her space in El Tiempo, but Gaviria, who frequently attacks her in his columns, isn’t going anywhere.

On her dismissal, Claudia López writes:

I don’t have enough words to explain to you how absolutely surprised and disconcerted this reaction from El Tiempo’s directorship leaves me. It never crossed my mind that El Tiempo would fire one of their own columnists for criticizing the newspaper, even less that they would to so without warning, instead notifying me about it publicly, and even less without even offering a single argument to contradict the criticisms. I never imagined that the directorship of the newspaper would turn to someone in power, instead of journalism, to report or contradict its information or opinions.

There is neither trust nor conditions to keep writing in El Tiempo now. I can write somewhere else. I’m not worried about that. But I do believe that attention must be called to the excessive risk to Colombian democracy when the most important newspaper in the country refuses to debate well-founded criticisms about the risks and conflicts of interest between its business, political and journalistic activities.

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La politóloga y analista Claudia López, le increpó al Presidente Álvaro Uribe su autoridad moral porque la mayoría de congresistas uribistas están en la cárcel o investigados por parapolítica.

Este momento es simplemente inolvidable y demuestra a la misma vez la madureza de la democracia colombiana y lo que nos aún falta por caminar.

La Dra. Claudia López fue despedida en diciembre 2009 como columnista de El Tiempo después de escribir una polémica columna:

Se preguntaba Rudolf Hommes en su columna de la semana pasada por qué unos temas se vuelven escándalos y otros no. Sugería que se requiere que el grueso del público tome conciencia y que haya un instigador. El cubrimiento que EL TIEMPO le dio al escándalo de Agro Ingreso Seguro (AIS) ofrece una oportunidad para reflexionar al respecto.

A diferencia de los demás medios escritos, EL TIEMPO no profundizó sobre el programa AIS sino sobre los efectos políticos del escándalo. Tomar ese ángulo era una decisión periodística válida dado que sus socios de la revista Cambio ya habían hecho el resto del trabajo. Sin embargo, más que un cubrimiento, lo que hizo EL TIEMPO fue una fabricación inducida para apoyar su interpretación deseada de los efectos políticos del escándalo.

La fabricación sesgada empezó con una pregunta en un foro en el tiempo.com, siguió con una nota que destacaba lo dicho por los foristas y concluyó con un supuesto artículo de análisis. En el foro se indagó a los foristas si creían que Arias debía renunciar por el escándalo de AIS. No sobra recordar que a EL TIEMPO nunca se le ocurrió preguntarles a sus foristas si Juan Manuel Santos debía renunciar por el escándalo de los ‘falsos positivos’. En el caso de Arias sí se le ocurrió. Culminado el foro, publicaron una nota titulada ‘Indignación y rechazo genera Andrés F. Arias por caso de Agro Ingreso entre lectores de eltiempo.com’, en la que destacaban que “la mayoría de usuarios le pide al ex ministro que renuncie a su precandidatura” y que “hubo muy pocos que defendieron a Arias”. Luego del foro inducido y la nota destacada, remataron con un artículo cuyo título sentenciaba: ‘Andrés Felipe Arias sale debilitado y Juan Manuel Santos logra ventaja en medio del escándalo de AIS’.

Es obvio que Arias sale debilitado, pero no es nada obvio que la consecuencia sea que Santos “logra ventaja”. EL TIEMPO asegura que el traspié de Arias “llevó a Juan Manuel Santos a convertirse en un ganador neto esta semana”. ¿De dónde saca EL TIEMPO que el espacio perdido por Arias fue ganado por Santos? ¿Hicieron una encuesta? No, pero a falta de encuesta el periódico usó su foro para lanzar la pregunta, inducir la respuesta y construir de allí sus conclusiones.

Aunque Arias no está compitiendo con Santos, sino con Noemí dentro de la consulta conservadora, el supuesto análisis ni siquiera menciona que una de las posibles ganadoras del desliz de Arias es Noemí. Además, el análisis se inventa un hecho para reforzar su argumento. Afirma que una de las razones por las cuales el fortalecido es Santos es que “los conservadores, además, tienen que someterse a una consulta interna para buscar su candidato, mientras ‘la U’ ya lo tiene: Santos”. ‘La U’ no ha escogido candidato presidencial. Lo único que le han ofrecido a Santos en la U es la jefatura del partido, no la candidatura presidencial. ‘La U’ es el promotor del referendo reeleccionista y si es aprobado es de esperarse que sea Uribe, no Santos, el candidato presidencial de ‘la U’. Supongo que esos hechos dañaban el “enfoque del análisis” y por eso fueron desechados.

“No será fácil que Noemí merezca el respaldo de Uribe, después de que ella lo ha acusado de ‘comprar’ el referendo y amenazado con ‘derrotarlo’ en las urnas.” Esta frase, casi transcrita de declaraciones de Santos, trata de presentar como periodística la versión de Santos de que él, a diferencia de Noemí, no es un traidor ni quiere derrotar a Uribe. Cualquiera que conozca medianamente la carrera de Santos sabe que cambiar de bando ha sido la constante de su ascenso político, al igual que de Noemí, y cualquiera entiende que ambos quieren suceder a Uribe; sólo que Santos quiere hacerlo sin que parezca una traición, agrego yo.

La calidad periodística de EL TIEMPO está cada vez más comprometida por el creciente conflicto de interés entre sus propósitos comerciales (ganarse el tercer canal) y políticos (cubrir al Gobierno que otorga el canal y a su socio en campaña) y sus deberes periodísticos. Este tipo de cubrimientos sesgados en nada contribuyen a resolver periodísticamente ese conflicto; lo único que logran es evidenciarlo.

La directiva de El Tiempo respondió así:

EL TIEMPO rechaza por falsas, malintencionadas y calumniosas las afirmaciones de Claudia López. La Dirección de este diario entiende su descalificación de nuestro trabajo periodístico como una carta de renuncia, que acepta de manera inmediata.

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