MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

Colombia's Right-Of-Center President Uribe Bucks Latin America's Trend
Toward The Left

IT takes a special person to seek repeatedly to be president of a
country that is all but ungovernable. Such a person is Alvaro Uribe,
who Sunday won re-election as president of Colombia.

Much of Colombia is controlled by left-wing guerrillas and the
narco-traffickers who subsidize them. A senior Colombian diplomat once
told the Chronicle that negotiations could never end the rebellion
because the rebels had no grievances that government could correct and
desired only to be outlaws. Right-wing paramilitary groups, originally
formed to combat the rebels, themselves have devolved into bands of
terroristic drug smugglers.

Uribe, who visited Houston in August, told Chronicle editors that
kidnappings and coca production had declined. A more recent CIA study,
however, concluded that coca production expanded more than 20 percent
last year, even after 4 billion in U.S. tax dollars had been spent to
eradicate Colombian coca plants.

Uribe's challenges are not limited to rebel-held territory and
narcoland. His ability to govern rests on a coalition of six parties
in Congress that more or less support him. In order to keep Colombia
solvent, Uribe must get Congress to pass unpopular reforms. But even
his supporters (not unlike many U.S. politicians) prefer awaiting the
disaster of insolvency to taking the painful steps to avoid it.

A staunch ally of the United States, Uribe must endure increasing
tensions between Colombia and neighboring Venezuela, where President
Hugo Chavez is an implacable U.S. foe determined to foster a leftward
movement in Latin America. With 62 percent of the vote,
right-of-center Uribe bucked the wave of recent leftist victories in
Bolivia, Chile and other Latin American countries.

Voters rewarded Uribe because of improvements he brought to security
in Colombia's main cities. Although critics say Uribe's methods are
too harsh and authoritarian, a landslide majority of voters, weary of
kidnappings and other violence, did not hesitate to sign up for more.