Uribe's Magic - or Demonic - Touch

Watching the returns come in in a central Bogotá grocery.

Until recently, he was little known. And the Centro Democratico political party didn't even exist. Now, he's on the verge of becoming Colombia's next president.

Oscar Ivan Zuluaga.

Last year, ex-Pres. Alvaro Uribe created the Centro Democratico party from scratch to be his vehicle for returning to power, or at least to influence. At the party's recent inaugural convention, Uribe pulled strings to get his one-time minister of finance Oscar Ivan Zuluaga nominated as the party's presidential candidate over the better known, more popular and more charismatic Francisco Santos, who'd been Uribe's vice president.

Then Zuluaga became embroiled in a spying scandal in which he appeared to lie shamelessly to his country.

Out of this formula for disaster, Uribe has produced the leading candidate to be Colombia's president for the next four years.

Pres. Juan Manuel Santos,
a sad second.

Uribe himself withstood enough scandals to sink a hundred politicians. There were his alleged links to right-wing paramilitary groups, which he continues fighting in court. There was the Falsos Positivos tragedy, in which military units murdered thousands of young men and disguised them as guerrillas in order to earn bonuses and time off. And there was the DAS spying scandal, which many observers compared to Watergate.

But none of those things dented Uribe's popularity. He had, after all, earned Colombians' gratitude by
beating back the guerrillas which had kept the nation under siege.

By the same token, Zuluaga's own ongoing scandal, in which he met with a since-imprisoned computer hacker in an apparent attempt to sabotage rival campaigns, spy on the military and interfere with the peace negotiations going on in Havana, doesn't seem to have cost him support, either.

“Voters see this as a battle between Santos and Uribe, not Santos and Zuluaga,” pollster Javier Restrepo told the Washington Post.

That makes this election a real testament to the continued popularity of Uribe, who himself was just elected senator.

I happened to be in a corner grocery store when the results came in on their television.

"We're a nation of masochists," the storekeeper said.

But a Zuluaga voter who owns a small fish restaurant expressed confidence that the scandal wouldn't hurt the candidate. Rather, the restauranter yearned for a repeat of the Uribe presidency.

"We've got to hit those guerrillas hard," he told me.

Enrique Peñalosa: Kingmaker?

But could Zuluaga conceivably militarily defeat the guerrillas, who have withstood the government for a half-century?

And Santos, who was Uribe's minister of defense, has arguably hit the guerrillas very hard, killing several of their leaders. Paradoxically, however, he doesn't seem to have gotten much public credit for that.

Santos is also carrying out peace negotiations with the FARC guerrillas, which have advanced further than any previous peace talks. Under a Zuluaga presidency, those talks would likely founder.

But Zuluaga's victory is far from sewn up.

The almost half of voters who supported one of the minor candidates will now have to choose between Santos and Zuluaga. Most of Conservative Party candidate Maria Lucia Ramirez's 15% support will likely go to Zuluaga, while the 15% of voters who backed the Polo Democratic/Union Patriotica candidate Clara Lopez will shift to Santos - if they vote at all. Key could be whether ex-Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa endorses an ex-rival, as well as whether leftist leaders actually urge their voters to back Santos (or, more accurately, to oppose Zuluaga).


By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Colombia's Nixon?

He even looks a bit like Nixon:Conservative presidential candidate Oscar Iván Zuluaga.

He worked with a shadowy hacker to play dirty tricks on political opponents. He apparently tried to sabotage the peace talks going on in Havana, Cuba. And he lied about it, repeatedly and in different ways.

Yet this man, Centro Democratico presidential candidate Óscar Iván Zuluaga, still believes himself qualified to be president.

Zuluaga, a relative unknown ex-treasury minister with little charisma, had shown surprising strength in recent polls, but still didn't stand much chance of defeating Pres. Santos if both made it to the second round of presidential elections. With the scandal generated by videos showing him scheming with a now-imprisoned computer hacker, Zuluaga might not make it into the second round - or there might be no second round at all if his supporters abandon him for Santos.

We should be grateful to the Spanish computer geek who recorded and leaked the now-infamous meeting. If not for him, Zuluaga might possibly have become president, setting Colombia up for years of illegal government monitoring, dirty politics and scandals which would have made the huge scandals during the administration of Pres. Alvaro Uribe, Zuluaga's political mentor, look trifling.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

President Zuluaga?

Presidential candidate Oscar Iván Zuluaga.
(Photo: El Tiempo)

When the newborn Centro Democratico Party selected Oscar Iván Zuluaga to be its presidential candidate, many observers called it political suicide. After all, the convention of the party, which was founded by ex-Pres. Alvaro Uribe, had passed over Uribe's vice president, Francisco Santos, who seemed to be their most popular and charismatic potential candidate (and happens to be Pres. Juan Manuel Santos's cousin). Zuluaga, an ex-treasury minister, in contrast, was seen as grey, uncharismatic and little known publicly.

Andres Sepulveda, arrested hacker
linked to Zuluaga campaign.

And in recent weeks, it seems that things should only be getting worse. Police arrested a hacker linked to the Zuluaga campaign, who allegedly spied illegally on the government-FARC guerrilla peace talks and tried to sabotage those talks. Zuluaga admitted having visited the hacker's office, but claimed that a conspiracy behind the episode was attempting to damage his image.

Meanwhile, ex-Pres. Uribe, who remains the boss and dominant figure in the Centro Democratico Party, found himself in an uncomfortable position after prosecutors cited him to back up claims he made that Pres. Santos's 2010 campaign had received a multimillion-dollar donation which might have come from drug traffickers. (At the time, Santos and Uribe were political allies.) Uribe refused to testify to the prosecutors, questioning the system's fairness - a strange position for an ex-president and senator-elect.

Yet, despite these polemics, a recent poll showed Zuluaga winning both the first-round presidential election, to be held May 25th, and also a following run-off election against Santos.

Alvaro Uribe: Help or hindrance for Zululaga?

But Zuluaga should hold off as yet on his redecorating plans for the presidential palace. Most other polls have placed Santos in the lead. And, it seems likely that as the voting nears, most supporters of also-ran candidates will shift to Santos instead of a relative unknown like Zuluaga, or the third leading candidate, one-time Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa, a chronic loser in election after election.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours