Ex-Uribe defense minister dominates Colombia vote; to face clean-government outsider in runoff

Uribe torchbearer dominates Colombia vote

BOGOTA, Colombia — A conservative former defense minister closely associated with Alvaro Uribe’s security gains easily defeated a maverick outsider in presidential elections on Sunday but fell short of the votes needed to avoid a runoff.

Juan Manuel Santos, who vows to keep up the pressure on leftist rebels that fed President Uribe’s popularity, won 47 percent support in a field of nine candidates. Antanas Mockus, a former two-time Bogota mayor who ran an unorthodox clean-government campaign and promised to raise taxes, got 21 percent.

Santos, 58, is a Colombian blueblood, the greatnephew of a president whose family long ran El Tiempo, the country’s leading newspaper. He needed a simple majority to avoid the June 20 runoff.

Addressing jubilant supporters Sunday night, Santos called the results an endorsement of the outgoing administration.

“Mr. President Uribe, this is your triumph and that of those who want to preserve your immense legacy,” he said. “Most Colombians voted to defend your achievements and proposals.”

Only after a court in February barred Uribe from running for a third straight term did Santos announce his candidacy.

The U.S.-educated economist, who said the Mockus-proposed tax increase would hurt economic growth, won in all but one of Colombia’s provinces and even took Bogota, considered a stronghold of Mockus and his insurgent Green Party.

Finishing third with 10 percent was German Vargas of Cambio Radical, a member of Uribe’s governing coalition along with Santos’ National Unity party. Gustavo Petro of the leftist Polo Democratico Alternativo earned 9 percent.

Although generally peaceful, Sunday was marked by nearly two dozen clashes with leftist rebels that claimed the lives of three soldiers, a potent reminder that Colombia’s half century-old conflict is far from resolved. Just last week, nine marines were killed in a single engagement.

The continuing violence — and Mockus’ lack of clarity on how he would deal with it — favored Santos, a Cabinet minister in three administrations running for elected office for the first time.

“My sense is that many Colombians were drawn to Mockus, his appealing message and what he represented, but in the end were worried about (electing) a relative novice on security and foreign policy questions,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Inter-American Dialogue think tank.

Mockus committed several gaffes during the campaign that revealed his inexperience in international relations.

None of four major losing candidates made an immediate endorsement. But the outcome of the June 20 runoff “will depend largely upon the coalitions formed between the Santos and Mockus camps with the elections ‘losers,’” said Arlene Tickner, a University of the Andes political scientist.

Combat was reported Sunday in six regions and all three soldier deaths were blamed by the government on the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. It had called on Colombians to boycott Sunday’s vote but did not order people to stay off the roads, as it has done in rural areas in past elections.

As defense minister under Uribe from 2006-2009, Santos helped knock the wind out of the FARC, Latin America’s last remaining major rebel army. Authorities say it now numbers less than 9,000, half its strength when Uribe first took office.

Santos also clashed with leftist Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Rafael Correa of Ecuador. Earlier this month, a judge in Ecuador ordered Santos’ arrest for authorizing a cross-border raid into Colombia’s southern neighbor in 2008 that killed the FARC’s No. 2 commander.

Mockus, 58, says he would not have made the incursion into Ecuador. But he says he also would be tough on the FARC.

And though careful not to criticize Uribe, Mockus has expressed dismay at the scandals that have plagued the outgoing president, including domestic spying, extrajudicial killings by soldiers, and the awarding of agricultural subsidies to political cronies.

In Bogota, Cecilia de Gaitan, 75, said she cast her ballot for Mockus hoping he might begin to rid Colombia of its endemic corruption.

“It won’t be easy but you have to vote with hope,” she said. She had voted for Uribe in the past two elections but called his second term “disastrous” and said she considers Santos “capable, but more of the same.”

Mockus, running for president for the third time, distinguished himself with a simple message: Only through education and respect for the law will Colombians find true security.

His colorful, pedagogical style catapulted him from fringe status in three short months. Online, he the biggest number of Facebook and Twitter fans.

But many voters didn’t think Mockus has what it takes to manage a country at war, whose institutions remain threatened by cocaine-trafficking criminal bands.

“He surely is the most honorable of all (the candidates), but you don’t run a government on utopian ideas,” said David Lewinski, 37, a health-care supply business owner. He voted for Vargas, third-place finisher, but said he would opt for Santos in a runoff.

Santos sought to distance himself from the scandals plaguing Uribe’s administration.

As defense minister, he fired 27 officers in late 2008 when it became clear prosecutors would be drawing up charges against soldiers accused of killing more than 1,000 civilians.

Critics say he bears some responsibility, but Santos contends it was he who put an end to the abuses.