La Política Colombiana

The next mayor of Bogotá will be selected in October and the parties are starting to determine their candidates.

El Tiempo notes that the Liberals are trying to decide who they will offer (Lanzar candidato propio a la Alcaldía o apoyar a uno de los favoritos, dilema de liberales en Bogotá with Concejo president Antonio Galán appearing to be an early prominent precandidate for the nomination.

In the PDA, the race is shaping up with at least four candidates: Samuel Moreno (ex-Senator and grandson of the military dictator, Gustavo Rojas), former mayor Enrique Peñalosa, and the former auditor general, Clara López Obregón and ex-Minister María Emma Mejía.

Moreno has been affiliated in the past both with the AD/M-19 and ANAPO, while Peñalosa, López and Mejía have political roots in the PL. The past party affiliations of these actors is interesting as we watch the PDA become (perhaps) a new long-term political force in Colombian electoral politics. Could it be that the long-looked for third party is finally materializing and institutionalizing?

Mejía served in the Gaviria and Samper administrations and was Horacio Serpa’s running mate in 1998.

Via El Tiempo: Antonio Navarro fue ratificado como Secretario del Polo Democrático Alternativo (PDA).

The party leadership also selected a panel which will review candidates and coalitional opportunities for the party going into the local elections in October:

Ayer también se eligió por consenso al nuevo Comité Ejecutivo, sobre el que recaerá la responsabilidad sobre lo que será la participación del Polo en las elecciones de octubre, incluidos los acuerdos con otros partidos y las listas.

Sebastián Mazzuca, James A. Robinson have an interesting paper on early (i.e., early 20th Century) electoral reforms in Colombia, focusing on the move from simple majority districts to the incomplete vote to PR. The paper is entitled Political Conflict and Power-sharing in the Origins of Modern Colombia.

Here’s the abstract:

In this paper we present historical evidence and a theoretical analysis of the origins of political stability and instability in Colombia for the period 1850-1950, and their relationship to political, particularly electoral, institutions. We show that the driving force behind institutional change over this period, specifically the move to proportional representation (PR), was the desire of the Conservative and Liberal parties to come up with a way of credibly dividing power to avoid civil war and conflict, a force intensified by the brutal conflict of the War of a Thousand days between 1899 and 1902. The problem with majoritarian electoral institutions was that they did not allocate power in a way which matched the support of the parties in the population, thus encouraging conflict. The strategic advantage of PR was that it avoided such under-representation. The parties however could not initially move to PR because it was not `fraud proof’ so instead, in 1905, adopted the “incomplete vote” which simply allocated 2/3 of the legislative seats to the winning party and 1/3 to the loser. This formula brought peace. The switch to PR arose when the Liberals became confident that they could solve problems of fraud. But it only happened because they were able to exploit a division within the Conservatives. The switch also possibly reflected a concern with the rising support for socialism and the desire to divide power more broadly. Our findings shed new light on the origins of electoral systems and the nature of political conflict and its resolution.

The article in PDF is here.

The journal Nueva Sociedad is available online back to its first issue in 1973. There archiving is not complete, the newer and older issues have full PDF availability of articles, but some years are still abstracts only.

Some Colombia-specific material:

• March 2024, Jaramillo: Colombia: a contravia a la tendencia regional [PDF]
• August 2024, Jaramillo: La reelección presidencial inmediata en Colombia [PDF]
• A special issue from 2024: Nueva Sociedad 192 | Colombia: tensiones y perspectivas
• November 2024: Colombia en el cambio de siglo: actores sociales, guerra y política [PDF]
• March 1999, Murillo: Representación, ciudadanía y nueva Constitución en Colombia [PDF]
• Several relevant pieces in the special issue Drogas, sociedad y estado (March/April 1994)
• November 1993: Colombia. Fragilidades y promesas de la doble transición [PDF] — looks at the advent of neoliberal reform and constitutional reform in the early 1990s (hence the “doble transición”).
• July 1986, Tokatilian: Colombia, el NOAL y la política mundial. Opciones, dilemas y perspectivas [PDF]
• September 1978, Valencia Villa: Una Atenas sin Sócrates. Sufragio y analfabetismo en Colombia [PDF]
• January 1978: Colombia: Elecciones y crisis política [PDF]
  

This list isn’t necessarily all the Colombia-related material in their archives–just the ones I noted and that had full text available.

Via the AP: Colombian authorities initiate manhunt for former defense minister

Colombian authorities have initiated an international hunt for a former defense minister after the Supreme Court upheld his conviction for stealing almost US$500,000 from a presidential campaign.

Fernando Botero Zea — son of famed painter Fernando Botero — is convicted of aggravated theft for pocketing the money from the 1994 campaign of Ernesto Samper, whose drug-tainted election bid he ran, and must serve a 30-month jail sentence.

[…]

Botero, who is believed to be outside the country, already served a five-year sentence in the last decade for his involvement in the Andean nation’s worst drug-corruption scandal.

In August 1996, he was forced to resign as defense minister and was immediately jailed when it was revealed he accepted millions of dollars in donations on behalf of Samper’s campaign from the Cali cartel.

It is a bizarre tale, especially given that Botero has such an internationally well-know father and was himself on the fast-track to prominence in the Liberal Party. I interviewed Botero during my first trip to Colombia in 1992 when he was in the Senate and briefly encountered him at a reception at the University of the Andes in 1994.

Via El Tiempo: Polo Democrático Alternativo (PDA) elegirá al sucesor de Antonio Navarro, este fin de semana

La Dirección Nacional del Polo debe elegir al nuevo Comité Ejecutivo y al Secretario General, instancias clave para avalar candidatos y pactar acuerdos para las elecciones de octubre.

This is quite interesting, as it demonstrates the ongoing institutionalization of the PDA both in terms of leadership, but more importantly in regards to the process of candidate certification.

There are also some issues at hand about how leadership will function which may require a re-writing of the party statutes.

Via Reuters: Ex-Colombian minister escapes after 6 years hostage:

A former Colombian government minister kidnapped by leftist rebels in 2024 said on Friday he escaped during an army attack on his secret jungle prison and hid in the wilderness for five days before being found.

Former Development Minister Fernando Araujo said in a statement he ran from the camp when army helicopters fired at his captors in the northern part of the country. He was found by an army patrol and reunited with his family on Friday.

That is wonderful news of Araujo and his family. I cannot imagine what being held hostage for such a long period of time would be like.

One can but hope that a similar good end occurs in the stories of so many kidnap victims in Colombia.