Colombia – Legislative Election Surprises
Juan Pablo Martinez
March 15, 2006
This past Sunday Colombians went to the polls to elect their new Congress. Local news outlets such as El Tiempo and El Espectador, reported a sweeping victory for the “Uribistas”, candidates supporting president Alvaro Uribe Velez and his government program.
The voters were not the only ones surprised by the results, which left out several politicians with traditionally strong constituencies. Among them, two former Bogotá majors, Enrique Peñalosa and Antanas Mockus, who were expected to obtain one or more seats, as well as Carlos Moreno, a populist running a campaign that promised to “hunt the rats” serving in congress. All three were among the “burnt” candidates under the new electoral system of proportional representation with free lists. The formula, designed to eliminate hundreds of small political parties seems to have caught many of the not-so-small parties by surprise: voters who were used to seeing their candidate’s picture in the ballot, now had to refer to a booklet and match the political party with a number, not with the party’s logo as in previous elections.
Perhaps what caused the most confusion was the free list. In previous elections, voters chose their party, which received a number of seats to be distributed in the order in which the candidates for each list appeared in the ballot. In Sunday’s election, they had to elect from within the list of their own party, designating who they wanted to represent them. Even President Uribe expressed his bafflement with the new ballot, which he deemed “complicated”.
Future presidential hopefuls from the Liberal and Democratic parties were selected in their respective primaries, and they will run against Uribe in next May’s elections. Carlos Gaviria took the reins of the Democratic Party from former guerrilla leader and long-term politician Antonio Navarro, in a major blow for Navarro’s followers who were certain of his nomination. On the Liberal Party’s primaries Horacio Serpa, a veteran of presidential elections will lead his party’s opposition against Uribe’s re-election.
Colombians will witness alliances and re-groupings of political parties in the next two months, many of which will seek to join forces against the seemingly unstoppable popularity of the current president, who is running for re-election after amending the constitution to allow him to serve a second term.
The voters were not the only ones surprised by the results, which left out several politicians with traditionally strong constituencies. Among them, two former Bogotá majors, Enrique Peñalosa and Antanas Mockus, who were expected to obtain one or more seats, as well as Carlos Moreno, a populist running a campaign that promised to “hunt the rats” serving in congress. All three were among the “burnt” candidates under the new electoral system of proportional representation with free lists. The formula, designed to eliminate hundreds of small political parties seems to have caught many of the not-so-small parties by surprise: voters who were used to seeing their candidate’s picture in the ballot, now had to refer to a booklet and match the political party with a number, not with the party’s logo as in previous elections.
Perhaps what caused the most confusion was the free list. In previous elections, voters chose their party, which received a number of seats to be distributed in the order in which the candidates for each list appeared in the ballot. In Sunday’s election, they had to elect from within the list of their own party, designating who they wanted to represent them. Even President Uribe expressed his bafflement with the new ballot, which he deemed “complicated”.
Future presidential hopefuls from the Liberal and Democratic parties were selected in their respective primaries, and they will run against Uribe in next May’s elections. Carlos Gaviria took the reins of the Democratic Party from former guerrilla leader and long-term politician Antonio Navarro, in a major blow for Navarro’s followers who were certain of his nomination. On the Liberal Party’s primaries Horacio Serpa, a veteran of presidential elections will lead his party’s opposition against Uribe’s re-election.
Colombians will witness alliances and re-groupings of political parties in the next two months, many of which will seek to join forces against the seemingly unstoppable popularity of the current president, who is running for re-election after amending the constitution to allow him to serve a second term.
Print
Email
