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I think Judi's point is right. If you know that you can get your head blown off for expressing a dissenting opinion, voting the wrong way, or advocating for a leftist cause, no poll or election result is reliable. In addition to naked fear, people are subjected to massive disinformation and propaganda. Until free speech is real, and the country is no long stalked by rightwing paramilitary death squads and a massively US-funded military with one of the worst human rights records on earth, no data on what the people want can be trusted. See the excerpts below from a Peace News report on Uribe's first 'election', posted by Judi Lynn in another thread. Notice in particular that only 25% of the electorate voted in his Uribe's first presdential 'win.' That kind of number is likely also reflected in opinion polls--that is, vast numbers of people don't participate or don't give their true opinion. The inflated figures for Uribe merely confirm the extreme corruption of the political system. Nobody with his record of death squad, drug trafficking, political bribery and ponzi financial scheme scandals can possibly be that popular. My guess would be that true figures on public opinion would be half that--in the 40% range, with a portion of that support coming from military-dependent families, other 'big business' drug trafficking networks (besides Uribe Inc.--i.e., those who are being protected), and short-term thinkers--people who see US "free trade for the rich" and US billions in military aid as a gravy train (i.e., they think Uribe has US favor, and will bolster their own perilous status in the middle class; their futures would be more secure with an honest government, but an honest government is not an option). About 20% of his real support (of about 40%) derives from insular self-interest--is my guess. And the rest are political fascists including the very rich--always a small minority in any country. I think the polling is very screwed up, and the elections are not valid. I also think that the overriding reality in Colombia is the US. Colombia is a US client state, and the launching pad for US control and US aggression in the region. Colombians have lost their sovereignty. They no longer have a choice, for instance, on the US establishing seven new US military bases in their country. And what I'm surmising--in the Uribe vs Santos contest-- is that the struggle between war profiteer/Pentagon forces here (i.e., the Bushwhacks), vs the Obama/Clinton team (which has a stated policy of peace, respect and cooperation in Latin America, but in the service of US corporations)--this same struggle is reflected in Colombia. There are no good choices in Colombia as to political leadership because it is a US client state. You have "free trade for the rich" Uribe, who makes corporate deals on behalf of the upper class (including very rich drug lords), and the would-be military dominators of the region--led by Santos. The Bushwhacks want Santos--in fact, they want a military dictatorship in Colombia; the Obamaites want Uribe ("free trade for the rich," relative peace). The choices are bad, and the US controls the choices.
Also, part of my speculation: US-based entities (not necessarily the Obama government, but possibly Bushwhack moles within the government, esp. Pentagon/CIA) are promoting 'news' about Uribe's scandals, in preparation for something--maybe an assassination attempt, which, if successful, might trigger a military coup, with Santos ending up as 'president.' Colombia is so undemocratic now that a military junta would be a short leap --much like Honduras.
I mean, who would've thought that this Mitcheletti character and the Honduran military would end up running Honduras? There is strong evidence that that, too, is a Bushwhack plot, and that it could not have occurred without support from powerful forces here. And those forces have two main motives, a) retaining and expanding the substantial US military base in Honduras, and b) as one Honduran general is quoted as saying: by their coup they have "prevented communism from Venezuela reaching the United States." I think Obama/Clinton share these motives, to some extent, but their methods are far different. The Rumfeld's and Cheneys (and McCain's and DeMint's) of this world don't believe in diplomacy and any kind of democratic rule of law. Obama/Clinton do. (Personally, I think they diverted the Honduran coup from assassinating Zelaya to exiling him to Costa Rica--that's the best they could do in the circumstance of a Bushwhack plotted and triggered coup; they may have gained more control over the situation since then--we'll see.)
One of the seering memories of my youth--I was a teenager--was the Life magazine cover photo of the bloodied body of Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of CIA-infested South Vietnam, who had been assassinated by CIA operatives because he was tending toward a peace accord with North Vietnam (1963), which JFK was encouraging. Communications in those days were slow, and JFK's orders to Lodge to meet with Diem and solve the democratic crisis in South Vietnam could be disobeyed, ignored and manipulated (time-wise) by those who wanted war in Vietnam and a "war president" puppet to head the government (the CIA and Lodge). JFK knew that Diem was in danger, and signed an order authorizing Diem's removal from power, but stipulating that he would not be harmed. The latter part of his order was ignored.
A month later, JFK himself was assassinated, by the same agency. The forces in our society who contrive wars are vicious and lawless, and have seen a great enhancement of their power over the last eight years. There is considerable evidence that they are planning Oil War II-South America, and Colombia is right in the middle of that plot. It doesn't matter in the least what the people of Colombia want. When the time is ripe, if it is necessary to the war plan, the "war president" will be installed, one way or another. Uribe can be gotten rid of, and, in the midst of that trauma, Santos installed--if that is what the war plan requires.
In my speculations about this, I wasn't positing a democratic choice of Santos over Uribe. I was positing a CIA/Pentagon choice.
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Free and fair press?
Even when he announced his intention to run for President, Uribe's paramilitary connections appear to have deterred many journalists from examining the ties between drug gangs and the Uribe family. An exception was Noticias Uno, a current affairs programme on the TV station Canal Uno. In April 2002, the programme ran a series on alleged links between Uribe and the Medellín drug cartel. After the reports aired, unidentified men began calling the news station, threatening to kill the show's producer Ignacio Go'mez, director Daniel Coronell, and Coronell's three-year-old daughter, who was flown out of the country soon after the calls began. Go'mez too was later forced to flee and is currently living in exile.
Noticias Uno told the story of how, in 1997, the US Drugs Enforcement Administration (DEA) seized 50,000 kilos of potassium permanganate from a ship docked in San Francisco harbour. Permanganate is a chemical used in the production of cocaine. The cargo was heading for a company called GMP, headed by Pedro Moreno Villa, who was Uribe's campaign manager when he was running for the presidency. The chemicals seized were sufficient to produce cocaine with a street value of $15bn. The DEA confirmed that GMP was the biggest importer of the chemical to Colombia between 1994 and 1998, when Uribe was Governor of Medellín and Moreno Villa was his chief of staff.
Uribe had slipped the noose again. Two powerful business groups with ties to the political establishment own RCN and Caracol, the biggest television and radio networks in Colombia. As the presidential race gathered pace, journalists became increasingly concerned that these media bosses were threatening their editorial independence. Their concerns were heightened when Uribe picked a member of the Santos family that owns the country's most influential daily newspaper to be his vice-president.
Free and fair election?
So, despite his links to the paramilitaries and the drug cartels, Uribe won the presidency. But to call Uribe's victory a landslide - as many in and outside Colombia did - is a gross distortion of the facts. Uribe got 53% of the official vote, but only 25% of the electorate voted. Many urban and middle class Colombians, who have been largely sheltered from the civil war to date, were thoroughly disillusioned by the peace process of former President Andres Pastrana and were willing to back a hardliner like Uribe. But the election was hardly a fair one.
Mapiripan is the site of one of the worst paramilitary massacres to date, yet many of the people there voted for the "paramilitary" candidate Uribe. Father Javier Giraldo of the NGO Justicia y Paz was in Mapiripan on election day: "There was a great deal of fraud. There were paramilitaries in the voting booths. They destroyed a lot of ballots. This was denounced to the Ombudsman, but nothing happened."
Electoral fraud, widespread paramilitary threats (denounced by virtually all the other candidates during the election campaign) and the almost total decimation of the parliamentary left in the preceeding decade all contributed to Uribe's election win.
Judi Lynn's posted comment:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x24657
The original article by Tom Feiling, entitled "The Paramilitary Candidate::
http://www.peacenews.info/issues/2455/245512.html |
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