'LOTS OF LAWS, BUT NO LAW'

BOGOTA, Aug. 27 - President Clinton arrives in Colombia Wednesday to
emphasize U.S. support for Colombian President Andres Pastrana and
symbolically hand over a check for $1.3 billion in new anti-drug aid.

But neither the personal backing nor the aid is likely to do much, in the
short term at least, to address the domestic problems Pastrana faces at the
midpoint of a presidency that has been on a steady downward trajectory
since his inauguration two years ago. Most of his troubles have little to
do directly with the drug trafficking that is the main focus of U.S. attention.

Beset by economic woes--particularly a stubborn unemployment rate that has
topped 20 percent--Pastrana also has been assailed and blocked at every
turn by a Congress in which he has never commanded a majority and which
mistrusts his motives, dislikes many of his policies and feels he is not up
to the job. Already several rivals are campaigning to replace him.

Although he was elected on a peace platform with the greatest number of
votes ever tallied in a national election here, fewer than 30 percent of
Colombians believed Pastrana was doing a good job during most of this year,
according to nationwide opinion polls. In a recent survey asking who has
the most power in Colombia, 46 percent of those questioned named leftist
guerrilla leader Manuel Marulanda, and nearly a third said the United
States. Pastrana was far behind with 10 percent.

Few say they believe his peace negotiations with the guerrillas are going
anywhere, and both violence and drug exports have continued to soar.
According to a government report released last week, Colombia's murder rate
leaves an average of one person dead every 20 minutes--a rate higher than
that for car theft. An average of seven of Colombia's 38 million people are
kidnapped each day.

Many, although far from most, of these crimes are committed by participants
in a war that pits leftist guerrillas against both the Colombian military
and right-wing paramilitary groups. The majority are attributed to common
criminals who have thrived in the overall climate of lawlessness.

"Colombia has lots of laws, but no law," said Carlos Lemoine, president of
the National Polling Center, the country's largest polling firm.
"Guerrillas, narco-traffickers and paramilitary groups provide training
grounds for criminals. Now, if you commit a crime, you can hide behind
them." Arrest and conviction rates are minuscule.

Although the government has tried to address such problems as the more than
1 million Colombians driven from their homes by violence and the lack of a
government social or law enforcement presence in many regions, little
visible progress has been made.

In a series of second anniversary interviews this month, Pastrana defended
his leadership and achievements. "Internationally, we can now walk with our
heads higher than ever before," he told the newsmagazine Cambio. "The
entire world supports us and is with us in economic and social policy, and
in the fight against narco-traffic and in my efforts to achieve peace,
among other things. This achievement is 100 percent due to my government's
policies."

In terms of the peace negotiations underway with the country's two largest
guerrilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the
National Liberation Army (ELN), Pastrana said, "We have moved forward;
unfortunately it has been slow, as happens in these processes."

Although most Colombians continue to support the peace process, Pastrana
has gotten little in return for turning over a Switzerland-size swath of
south-central Colombia to the FARC and negotiating a smaller demilitarized
zone with the ELN in the north. For many, Pastrana has turned out to be a
"one-idea man," said Miguel Silva of the weekly Semana.

"The truth is that his principal policy has been peace," said Javier
Hendez, political editor of El Espectador, a leading Bogota newspaper. "But
Colombians across the board don't see it getting any results that are
reflected in their own lives. What they do see is a lot of things are
worse." In addition to the violence, "there is no government
infrastructure, higher taxes and worse services."

"The public's view of Pastrana," Hendez said, "is worse than of Samper on
his worst day." Ernesto Samper, Pastrana's predecessor, is widely credited
with driving Colombia's long-solid economy into the ground, allowing drug
traffickers free rein and ruining the country's international reputation.

As for Clinton's visit, polls indicate the vast majority of Colombians hold
him and the United States in high regard. Although Colombian labor unions
and humanitarian organizations are among those who have denounced the U.S.
aid package as far too heavily weighted toward military assistance and
charge that it will intensify the war, many here say Colombia has run out
of options. There is a fairly widespread belief that escalation from a
position of military strength could finally drive the guerrillas toward a
real peace and may offer the only way left to start to make things better.

Apart from government pronouncements, few Colombians appear to take
seriously the restrictions so carefully delineated in Washington on the
military aid that comprises 80 percent of the U.S. package--that it be used
only for anti-drug operations and not for an offensive against the guerrillas.

U.S. officials from Clinton on down describe Plan Colombia as a $7.5
billion Colombia-generated social development program to which the United
States is contributing $1.3 billion in military and developmental
assistance. But both supporters and detractors in the media and in popular
parlance here use the term Plan Colombia to refer exclusively to U.S.
military helicopters and training to be used against the guerrillas, and to
the U.S-backed policy of spraying herbicides on the coca and poppy crops
that provide raw material for cocaine and heroin.

Although the U.S. package includes $238 million in "soft" assistance for
drug crop substitution, judicial reform and human rights, "we are opposed
to all of Plan Colombia," said Alirio Uribe of the Lawyers' Collective, a
group that pushes for prosecution of human rights violators. "The social
part is just window dressing for military aid that is going to make the
social problems worse."

"Speaking as a middle-class Colombian," countered Roberto Avila, who sits
on the editorial board of Cambio, "the only good thing about Plan Colombia
is that the army is going to get some more helicopters. There's a war going
on here."

The guerrillas see it from the same war-related perspective. In a
communique issued today and titled "Clinton Go Home," the FARC warned that
the U.S. aid will endanger the peace process and expand the war.

The Clinton administration has argued that stemming the rise in drug
exports that help fund the guerrillas and paramilitary groups is the first
step toward solving the rest of the nation's difficulties. But many here
consider drug trafficking among the least of Colombia's problems--far
behind the long-running guerrilla war to which it is seen as only
tangentially related, as well as political corruption and unemployment.

"It's unemployment that excites people," said Lemoine. "The probability
that you're going to be one of the ones killed or kidnapped is significant,
but it doesn't really move people. Whether you're going to work today, or
tomorrow, or the next day, is what touches everyone."

There is a large element of truth in Pastrana's claim that he inherited the
most difficult of Colombia's economic problems--four years of mismanagement
under Samper, along with a revenue-sharing system that hands over 42
percent of federal funds to state governments that have proven corrupt or
inept; a national pension system that sets retirement age at 55 for women
and 60 for men; and labor laws that business argues are untenable.

The economy has begun to recover from the high interest rates and low
investment and productivity levels of last year. But many manufacturers
have learned to be more productive without replacing the workers they let
go during the depths of the recession. Structural reforms the government
says it wants--and the International Monetary Fund has asked for in
exchange for providing Colombia money--have stalled.

Pastrana's Conservative Party government came to power with the support of
independents and dissident Liberal Party members who were optimistic about
peace and hoping to remove the Samper stain.

"I'm a Liberal, but I and others voted for Pastrana," said Rodolfo Hommes,
an investment banker who served as finance minister in the early 1990s
under the government of Liberal Cesar Gaviria. "We campaigned against
[Horacio] Serpa," the Liberal who ran against Pastrana, "because we thought
Pastrana offered a better economic policy and the hope of a better
government than Serpa."

By this summer, with more and more of his Liberal supporters turning
against him, and with the outbreak of a series of corruption scandals
within his government, Pastrana tried an end run around the opposition. He
proposed a national referendum on political restructuring that included new
congressional elections--two years before they are due--and a reduced
number of seats. Not surprisingly, Congress refused the necessary approval
for the referendum and, for good measure, for Pastrana's economic reforms,
and the government withdrew the entire package.

Colombian Opinions

With President Clinton heading to Colombia this week, here is a sampling of
recent opinion polls.

Polls were conducted by the National Polling Center, Colombia's leading
private survey organization.

Poll conducted in Aug. 22. Sample size was 826.

Q: Do you know that U.S. President Clinton is about to visit Colombia?

yes 91%

no 9%

Q: Do you consider President Clinton's visit to Colombia positive for the
country?

yes 74%

no 22%

Poll conducted in June. Sample size was 1,600.

Q: Who do you believe has more power right now in Colombia?

Manuel Marulanda,

FARC guerrilla leader 46%

United States 31%

Andres Pastrana,

Colombian president 10%

Carlos Castano,

paramilitary leader 4%

Poll conducted in July for Canal Caracol, Colombian TV. Sample size 1,613.

Q: Which of the following problems is the most serious for the country?

Guerrillas,

paramilitaries 37%

Unemployment 29%

Corruption 25%

Drug traffic 7%

Q: Do you believe the peace process is on the right track or the wrong track?

wrong 70%

right 26%

Q: Do you believe U.S. aid could escalate the war?

yes 55%

no 36%

Q: Do you think the economy is on the right track or wrong track?

right 19%

wrong 76%

Note: No response not listed