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

[Judi Lynn]

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

BOGOTA, May 8 (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.
(snip)

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://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42290

[Judi Lynn]

1. More on voter intimidation by the pro-Uribe death squads: Paramilitaries Aggressively Campaign for V

ELECTIONS-COLOMBIA: Paramilitaries Aggressively Campaign for Votes
By Constanza Vieira

BOGOTÁ, Mar 10 (IPS) - A group of sons and daughters of victims of the "dirty war" in Colombia urged voters not to vote in Sunday's legislative elections for candidates on lists that include alleged members of paramilitary militias, their accomplices or their front men.

When parliamentary Deputy Muriel Benito-Revollo was a candidate in the 2002 elections in the province of Sucre on the country's Caribbean coast, local paramilitary chief ‘Rodrigo Cadena' took an active approach in supporting her campaign.

'Cadena', who controlled Benito-Revollo's hometown of San Onofre, among other areas, called the local residents, including the members of the town council, to the central square.

He then placed slips of paper with the names of each town councillor into a bag, and drew out two of the names.

"He said that if Señora Benito-Revollo was not elected, he would kill those two town councillors, as well as a few people from San Onofre who he would choose at random," philosopher Iván Cepeda told IPS.

Iván is the son of Manuel Cepeda, a journalist and senator of the leftist Patriotic Union party, which was destroyed by a campaign of assassination of its leaders, including Manuel, who was murdered in 1994.

More:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32464



COLOMBIA: Speaking Out Against Paramilitaries - Before Fleeing Again
By Constanza Vieira

PAJONAL, Colombia, Dec 11 (IPS) - Even his elderly aunt Jacinta, who raised him, is urging him to leave town. This will be the second time Santander Blanco has had to flee for his life. The first time he was forced to leave after refusing to vote for the candidates to the Colombian legislature imposed by the ultra-rightwing paramilitary militias.

That time, he spent three years hiding out in the Caribbean port city of Cartagena in northern Colombia, two hours away by road, and lost everything he had gained in his years of work as a civil servant. But he returned home.

Now he will escape once again to save his life. But this time he decided to speak out before leaving.

He did so before 1,300 people in a public hearing that the Senate human rights committee convened in late November in the municipal capital, San Onofre, in the northwestern Caribbean coastal province of Sucre.

During the hearing, he accused Mayor Jorge Blanco (no relation) of paramilitary ties, in front of the provincial police chiefs. The mayor had won the elections in which he was the only candidate. The regional legislators were arrested in mid-November on orders of the Supreme Court, accused of forming part of paramilitary bands.

More:
http://wwww.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35804

[Blue_Tires]

2. rec'd

[Doctor_J]

3. These people need to learn about "Fair elections" and "Photo IDs"

then just make sure that anyone who wants to vote for Uribe's opponent isn't qualified to vote, and voila' - same result without all those bodies piled up.