Alvaro Uribe Velez was elected in the first round of elections on the year 2002 by the colombian people. He inspired intelligence, hard-work, and most important of all: STRENGHT. The general feeling in the Colombia was that illegal armed forces (left and right wing) had taken over the country and that the central government was not able to do anything about it. Alvaro Uribe gave something that the colombian people had lost: HOPE.The idea to have a Colombia in peace (whatever that means), plus a "realistic plan" to do it, triggered Mr. Uribe's unprecedented victory in this countrie's polls. If before the leftist guerrillas (specially FARC) were a negative symbol in the eyes of colombians and the world, now they had become EVIL.. PURE EVIL.
People forgot that the reason why there are more than 15,000 colombians behind the guerrilla's lines, is because they are hungry, sick and poor. Now, i am not saying that they [the guerrillas] do wonderful things... no they do TERRIBLE THINGS.. TERRIBLE... but Colombia became something that at least i had never seen before (probably because of my young age): Colombia became "right wing friendly".
The armed forces in Colombia have become greater in number, but as the guerrillas' last actions show, they did not become more effective. The media has been shutted up a couple of times, and now people do not know what to believe. However, president Uribe is still a very popular guy in the country... so popular that he is striving to change the constitution in order to allow re-election (s0mething which has not worked very positively in many latin american countries).
This is something to worry about.. specially now that we have seen how south-america has decided to take a more leftist focus (Venezuela, Peru, Uruguay, Brazil..). Having a right wing government in the middle of left oriented states might not be ideal. But Colombia (with or without Uribe) is far away of taking a left wing approach. The reason? Well, i believe that colombians see the word "left" as a synonym of terror, drug traffic, kidnapping and murder. It will take a lot to change this mentality, but the worst part of all, is that even if the mentality is changed, even if Colombia does not re-elect Uribe (which i am not saying that he should or should not be re-elected), even if Colombia takes the example of its left-wing neighbors... things might not change.
Somebody should make a reality show with succesful ex-presidents of all over the world to elect Colombia's next president. Not because i think that he/she will do effectively the job.. but because the world should see how ^#%@ the situation really is.
Alvaro Uribe Velez
