Colombia election open as court blocks Uribe run

[pampango]

Source: Washington Post

Colombia's presidential race is wide open after a Constitutional Court ruling that blocks a referendum on whether Alvaro Uribe should be allowed to seek a third consecutive term. The hugely popular Uribe, one of the strongest U.S. allies in South America, had not said he wanted to run again, and he went on national television to say he would respect Friday's ruling. In a 7-2 decision that is not subject to appeal, the high court ruled that a law passed by Congress to set up the referendum was unconstitutional.

"I heed and respect the decision of the honorable Constitutional Court," Uribe said.

Influential Colombians from leading industrialists to the president of the Inter-American Development Bank, Luis Alberto Moreno, had opposed a third term for Uribe - not because they were unhappy with his tenure, but because they said a third term would hurt democratic stability.

Even the U.S. government, a strong backer of Uribe in his fights with leftist rebels and cocaine traffickers, suggested it was time for him to relinquish power. During a visit by Uribe to the White House last year, U.S. President Barack Obama politely suggested in front of reporters that two terms was plenty, citing the example of the first president of his country, George Washington. It would have been contradictory for Washington to embrace a third term for Uribe after criticizing the successful moves by Venezuela's socialist president and strong U.S. critic, Hugo Chavez, to extend his time in office.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/27/AR2010022700523.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. President Obama forgot F.D.R. died in office in his FOURTH term!

The Republicans rushed to legislate term limits after that so no Democratic President could ever create programs like the New Deal again and elect another strong President like Roosevelt who would bring help to the poor and the middle class.

[Peace Patriot]

2. FDR ran for and won four terms as president. Nothing wrong with that. Benefit to the nation. New

Deal and all. The Pukes changed the Constitution in the 1950s, without a vote of the people, and imposed a term limit on the president to prevent a New Deal from ever happening here again. Barack Obama seems to forget that--as he would, since he is no FDR. Did this Constitutional scholar also forget that Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the other Founders opposed term limits on the president as undemocratic? I agree with them that the people should be able to elect whomever they want and need as president, provided that elections are fair and transparent, as they are in Venezuela and as they are not, here and in Colombia.

There is a lot of disinformation in this paragraph:

"During a visit by Uribe to the White House last year, U.S. President Barack Obama politely suggested in front of reporters that two terms was plenty, citing the example of the first president of his country, George Washington. It would have been contradictory for Washington to embrace a third term for Uribe after criticizing the successful moves by Venezuela's socialist president and strong U.S. critic, Hugo Chavez, to extend his time in office." --from the OP

For instance, Chavez is described as "Venezuela's socialist president." Do we ever see Obama described as America's "capitalist president"? A prior favorite corpo-fascist 'news' tag of Chavez has been "Venezuela's leftist president, friend of Fidel Castro...". Was Junior ever described as "America's rightwing president, friend of Prince Bandar..."?

We need to peer deep into every word of corpo-fascist 'news' articles. But the visible part is not even the worst part of the disinformation that is being promulgated. It is the black holes where information should be that are the most serious destroyers of the truth. For instance, this paragraph, above, attributes the lifting of the term limit on the president in Venezuela to Chavez's "successful moves." They don't tell you that it was an honest, fair, transparent vote of the people, by a big margin, that lifted the term limit on the president and on governors (some of them rightwing). They don't contrast this with the sneaky way that the Pukes imposed a term limit here to forestall another New Deal, nor with the way Uribe--the U.S. government's "best friend" in Latin America--got his second term, through bribery and stealth.

Chavez is the DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED president of Venezuela, and he can prove it. Obama cannot. Uribe cannot.

Deeper into the black hole where information should be are three realities about the U.S. and Colombia: 1) Barack Obama cannot prove that he was elected--though I believe that he was, it is only a matter of belief and secondary evidence, given the privately controlled 'TRADE SECRET' voting systems throughout the U.S. (nor can any office holder in the U.S., including the members of Congress, prove that he or she was actually elected); 2) many thousands of voters, political activists, community organizers, labor union leaders, human rights workers, peasant farmers and others have been murdered, in Colombia, with large swaths of the country terrorized by the Colombian military and its death squads, such that conditions for fair elections do not exist in Colombia; and 3) The U.S. chooses the president of its client state, Colombia, not the voters--that's what CIA Director Leon Panetta was doing in Bogota last week--insuring that Uribe's and Bush Jr.'s bloody trail would be covered up, by retiring Uribe, and choosing his successor, former Defense Minister, Manuel Santos, who is worse than Uribe (even more of a tool of the Pentagon and the CIA--he is the 'Donald Rumsfeld of South America, and is chafing at the bit to attack Venezuela, kill all the leftists and hand Venezuela's oil--the biggest oil reserves on earth--twice Saudi Arabia's--over to Exxon Mobil and the Pentagon).

And here's a story that likely will remain deep, deep in that black hole where information should be:

A mass grave containing 2,000 bodies of local political and community activists, with grave dates (but no names) from 2005 through 2009, was recently discovered in La Macarena, Colombia, a region of special interest and activity by the U.S. military.

The La Macarena massacre (includes a description of, and links to docs about, U.S. ops in La Macarena)
http://www.cipcol.org/?p=1303

The UK military connection
http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/2010/02/04/silence-on-british-army-link-to-colombian-mass-grave/

I frankly expect Uribe to go the way of Diem. He knows too much and apparently could not save himself by his recent signing of the secretly negotiated U.S./Colombian military agreement which, among other things, signs, seals and delivers retroactive total diplomatic immunity for all U.S. soldiers and U.S. 'contractors' in Colombia. It also formalizes installation of the U.S. military--including U.S. spy and fighter planes and their pilots, the U.S. Navy and crews and (if this number can be believed) some 1,600 U.S. soldiers and 'contractors'--at SEVEN military bases in Colombia, with U.S. military use of ALL civilian airports and other infrastructure as well. The "1,600" U.S. soldiers and 'contractors' have been hauntingly described as "just a few military advisers."

Whether this is preparation for a war, or merely intended to intimidate the region and impose U.S. "free trade for the rich" in Colombia and/or to provide cover for something else ("turkey shoot" training for Afghanistan?), I don't know and can't know, even though you and I and other Americans are paying for it. All I know is that the bad, bad Bushwhack ambassador to Colombia (still in place), Wm. Brownfield, negotiated it and signed it in secret--secret from the Colombian people, from the Colombian legislature (some of whom bravely objected) and from the other leaders of the region who weren't consulted and weren't even warned that it was about to be announced (and most of whom strongly objected), and Uribe was so mortified that he wouldn't attend the all-South American meeting of UNASUR to explain it, and instead took trips to individual leaders to discuss it in private. I suspect that what the U.S. military has been doing in Colombia is so illegal under Colombian and international law that Uribe--70 of whose political associates are already in jail, under indictment or under investigation for close ties to the death squads and drug trafficking--has to be removed, and only a Santos can keep a lid on it.

"It would have been contradictory for Washington to embrace a third term for Uribe after criticizing the successful moves by Venezuela's socialist president and strong U.S. critic, Hugo Chavez, to extend his time in office."

Since when has "contradictory" ever stopped "Washington" from embracing anything? 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting contradicts democracy--yet "Washington" adores it. Saudi Arabia is the most undemocratic, repressive society on the face of the earth--yet Washington considers Saudi Arabia one of its best friends. Colombia has the second worst human rights record in the world, and the second worst human displacement crisis in the world, and is one of the most bloody-minded society in the world,--a country where the discovery of mass graves is commonplace--yet Colombia is America's best "friend" in Latin America. "Contradictory," thy name is Washington, a slave owner whose name is now the capitol of an Empire--a development that Washington would have loathed--with a mixed race president, now declaiming Washington's tradition on term limits, and who tells us to "look forward not backward" on heinous war crimes--massive torture of prisoners, slaughter of a hundred thousand innocent people to steal their oil, ripping up the Constitution, massively looting of our government, and God knows what else.

A Constitutional scholar saying that, when it comes to justice, what happened in the past doesn't matter--unless you are a small time crook or murderer. Then your past is looked at rather closely. But if you are really big, really powerful and really rich, and slaughtered a hundred thousand innocent people, we don't look back. Now that's "contradictory"!

IF "Washington" wanted Uribe to continue in office, a third term would be no problem to "Washington." They would be proclaiming it "democratic" because it would have been by done by a general plebiscite--no matter that thousands of voters and political activists are dead, their bodies in mass graves. It is utter bullshit that "Washington" cares how its dictators are installed. It is utter bullshit that "Washington" supports democracy anywhere, including here. "Washington" is the capitol of the corporate rulers and the war profiteers. It no longer stands for even the contradictory ideals of the Founders of our country, of a government "of, by and for the people." "Washington" is a cauldron of corruption. It doesn't even bother to pretend to be anything else, any more. It is so corrupt that corruption is a given; it is normal; and those who think otherwise are ridiculed as weird and as "off the reservation." Hand-over-fist looting of the public coffers every day is the RULE in "Washington," and any "contradictory" impulse--say, to serve the people--is considered impolite, if not crazy.

"Contradictory," my ass. It "would have been contradictory" for "Washington" to support a third term for Uribe, and it would have been LIED ABOUT by this CIA-controlled shit-rag, the "Washington Post," if it had been CONVENIENT to "Washington." But it was not convenient, so we get this deep pile of bull's dung dumped on their goddamned lies about Chavez.

[Umbral]

3. "hugely popular" who was their source for that inference? The US State Department? nt

[Judi Lynn]

4. Anyone who publicly admits he can't stand the creepy little weasel should expect

to kiss his ass goodbye, since paramilitaries have killed so many thousands of people for political reasons already, have even haunted the voting booths to intimidate the people into voting for the tiny presidente.

COLOMBIA: "Mark Him on the Ballot - The One Wearing Glasses"
By Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, May 8 , 2008 (IPS) - "With Uribe, we thought: this is the guy who is going to change the country," the 41-year-old fisherwoman told IPS.

That is why her fishing and farming village of 800 people in the central Colombian region of Magdalena Medio decided overwhelmingly to vote for current President Álvaro Uribe in the 2002 presidential elections, when he first ran.

The woman agreed to talk to IPS on the condition that she be asked neither her name (we will call her "L.") nor the name of her village.

The main city in the fertile region of Magdalena Medio is Barrancabermeja, an oil port on the Magdalena River, which runs across Colombia from south to north before emptying into the Caribbean Sea.

What convinced the villagers to vote for Uribe? "Because the region where we live is poor, very poor, it’s so difficult to find work, and when I heard him say ‘I am going to work for the poor, I am going to help them,’ I thought ‘this is a good president’."

When the rightwing president’s first four-year term came to an end in 2006, most of the villagers decided again to vote for him, reasoning that he just needed more time to reduce poverty.

The odd thing was that in both the 2002 and 2006 elections, despite the fact that the villagers had already decided to vote for Uribe, the far-right paramilitaries, who had committed a number of murders since 1998, when they appeared in the region that was previously dominated by the leftwing guerrillas, pressured the local residents to vote for Uribe anyway.

The paramilitaries did not kill people to pressure the rest to vote for Uribe, as they did in other communities, but merely used "threats," said L.

"If you don't vote for Uribe, you know what the consequences will be," the villagers were told ominously.

And on election day, they breathed down voters’ necks: "This is the candidate you’re going to vote for. You’re going to put your mark by this one. The one wearing glasses," they would say, pointing to Uribe’s photo on the ballot, L. recalled.

"One (of the paramilitaries) was on the precinct board, another one was standing next to the table, and another was a little way off, all of them watching to see if you voted for Uribe," she added, referring to the less than subtle way that the death squads commanded by drug traffickers and allies of the army ensured that L.’s village voted en masse for the current president in both elections.

More:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42290

[EFerrari]

5. Probably. They're the only ones who praise that butcher. n/t