BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Accusations of bribes from drug
traffickers, spying and email hacking have turned Colombia’s
presidential election into an ugly slugfest that has further polarized a
country trying to emerge from its violent past.
The mudslinging
has distracted attention from talks with the country’s main rebel group
to end the country’s half-century internal conflict, which had been
expected to be a key issue going into Sunday’s election.
Much of
the blame for the dirty campaigning falls on two former allies whose
public feuding has divided Colombia the past four years: President Juan
Manuel Santos and his still-powerful predecessor, Alvaro Uribe.
Despite
presiding over what may be South America’s best-performing economy,
Santos is struggling amid relentless attacks by Uribe and his
hand-picked heir, former finance chief Oscar Ivan Zuluaga. Polls say the
two are running neck and neck, well ahead of three other candidates but
with neither likely to garner the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff.
Zuluaga’s
conservative Democratic Center movement has lambasted Santos for what
it calls his softness in 18-month-old negotiations with the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC. Zuluaga has
threatened to end the talks in Cuba if he is elected, saying he will
demand the rebels prove their commitment to peace by declaring a
permanent cease-fire within a week.
But those policy differences
have taken a backseat to endless bickering and near-daily bombshells
that have Colombians shaking their heads in disgust.
It began with
media reports that Santos’ campaign manager, J.J. Rendon, received $12
million from the nation’s biggest drug traffickers to negotiate their
surrender. The information was based on three-year-old, leaked testimony
to Colombian prosecutors from a drug cartel boss jailed in the U.S.
Rendon,
a Venezuelan native, quickly resigned after acknowledging that he
interceded in the case, although he denied taking any money.
Two
days later, authorities arrested a computer expert who worked for
Zuluaga’s campaign, accusing him of hacking into the emails of FARC
negotiators and even Santos. Zuluaga denounced the arrest as a ploy to
derail his candidacy.
Uribe, without presenting any evidence, then
accused Rendon of funneling $2 million from the alleged drug-dealer
payments to Santos’ 2010 campaign.
The waters were muddied even
more with the appearance last weekend of a video shot clandestinely from
a cellphone in which Zuluaga listens attentively as the suspected
hacker outlines a strategy to use intelligence gathered illegally to try
to sabotage support for the peace talks.
And many Colombians,
even those who support Santos, were asking whether the president was
playing electoral politics with the peace process when he announced a
landmark agreement with the FARC on May 17 to jointly combat illicit
drugs. Many observers say he should have put the talks on hold until
elections had passed.
Both Zuluaga and Santos "are trying to win
at any cost," said Marta Lucia Ramirez, a former Uribe defense minister
and presidential candidate who was a distant third in the latest
Invamer-Gallup poll. "That’s what’s causing damage to the country,
that’s what destroying Colombians’ trust in their political leaders and
institutions."
The rancor between the two was on display Thursday
night in the first candidate debate attended by Santos, in which the
president suggested that Zuluaga would be Uribe’s "puppet" if elected.
That triggered a feisty exchange.
"You must show me respect,"
Zuluaga retorted with anger, banging his finger on his desk. "Just
because you’re president don’t think you can say that. I have my own
identity."
Santos responded: "Calm down. Don’t learn the bad habits of your boss."
Vicente
Torrijos, a political analyst at Bogota’s Rosario University, said the
onslaught of accusations was unlikely to tilt the election’s outcome.
"The society is so saturated with scandal that it produces the paradoxical effect of reinforcing
voter preferences," he said.
Santos,
the scion of one of Colombia’s richest families, inspires little
enthusiasm among voters, especially among the poor who have benefited
less from the economic boom. And Zuluaga is widely viewed as Uribe’s
subordinate. Yet none of their challengers appear to have been able to
turn that to their advantage, perhaps because the mainstream media have
focused on the two better-funded campaigns.
Whoever wins is going
to have a tough time soothing the bitterness stirred up by the
accusations. Congress is divided and Uribe, who was recently elected to
the Senate, has promised to rally opposition against Santos should he
win re-election.
"The hatred unleashed by the campaign isn’t going
to go away easily," said Michael Shifter, president of the
Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue.