COLOMBIAN VOTERS HOPE TO CLEAR SLATE

For disillusioned Colombians, tomrrow's presidential election is more a
purge of the past than a vote for the future.

No matter who wins, the voters will cast out a disgraced and despised
government.

Like the 1976 U.S. election after Watergate, analysts call Colombia's
electoral process a catharsis - the first tentative step toward ending a
"national nightmare."

President Ernesto Samper, barred by the constitution from seeking a second
term, has been dogged for four years by charges that he won the 1994
election with the help of $6.1 million from the Cali drug cartel. Colombia
has been racked ever since by corruption probes, drug trafficking, economic
decay and a spreading civil war, while Samper has fought to ensure his own
survival.

"The main importance (of the election) is that the country will finally get
rid of Samper and stop this collective disaster," said Alejandro Reyes, a
political science professor at the National University in Bogota.

Even so, a leading candidate, former interior minister Horacio Serpa of the
ruling Liberal Party, was intimately involved in Samper's 1994 campaign and
remains one of his staunchest defenders.

Serpa trails former Bogota mayor and Conservative Party candidate Andres
Pastrana, whom Samper narrowly defeated in 1994 by about 6 points in the
polls. Independent Noemi Sanin is in third place while retired military
chief General Harold Bedoya, a hard-line rightist, is running fourth.

If no one receives more 50 percent of the ballots, a run between the top two
vote-getters be held June 21.

The victor will face a daunting economic, political and moral up job.

The campaign-finance scandal tainted nearly every aspect Samper's
administration.

Fiscal restraint was one first casualties. Samper funneled millions of
dollars in state funds to the districts of key legislators who later cleared
him of wrongdoing in the campaign. He also caved in to union demands for
wage increases, in part to secure the backing of organized labor.

'To absolve Samper, (congressmen) pressured him to send money to their
regions," said Maria Angelica Arbelaez, an economist with Fedesarrollo, a
Bogota research center. "Samper was so close to falling that he needed any
support he could get. It's all reflected in public spending."

Colombia also was blacklisted by Washington for two consecutive years as an
unreliable partner in the war on drugs and hit with economic sanctions that
scared away foreign investment.

After four years of expansion in the early 1990s, the economy has
languished. The federal deficit has jumped to 3 percent of gross domestic
product, inflation is running at 20 percent annually and unemployment has
jumped to nearly 15 percent.

The Samper government "talked about creating 1.5 million Jobs and we have
inherited 1.5 million jobless. They said they were going to be the most
honest government, and they ended up being the most corrupt in the history
of Colombia," Pastrana said.

Pastrana, 43, is the son of former President Misael Pastrana. He worked as a
television journalist until 1988, when he was elected mayor of Bogota, the
capital.

During the 1994 race, he received tape recordings that linked the Samper
campaign to the Cali cartel. But many observers questioned the authenticity
of the tapes and attacked Pastrana for going public with them.

Instead of leading the opposition against Samper, a devastated Pastrana
moved to Miami. Alluding to his absence, Serpa said: "I have always been
here. I have never run from debates or from the circumstances of the nation."

But when Pastrana began his second presidential bid earlier this year, he
worked hard to dispel his image as a blue-blooded lightweight and moved to
the top of the polls by painting Serpa as the candidate of a failed government.

Pastrana has pledged to lower taxes and maintain fiscal discipline but also
plans to build schools, create 200,000 jobs and construct subways in Bogota and

Cali. His supporters range from conservative business tycoons to leftists
like Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Serpa, 55, grew up in a lowerclass family in the violence plagued northern
oil boomtown of Barrancabermeja. A Liberal Party stalwart, he has served in
public jobs ranging from judge to mayor, from senator to minister.

An engaging populist with a quick wit, Serpa has criticized the United
States for meddling in Colombian affairs and once called a U.S. Ambassador
"an ugly gringo." He has promised to carry out many of the social welfare
plans, such as expanded health care and subsidies for peasant farmers, that
were derailed under the scandal plagued Samper administration.

He says he will be able to carry out his agenda because "I'm not going to
have this political crisis. I won't have to confront a situation so
complicated, so complex."

He has wide support among Colombia's poor, who make up 53 percent of the
population.

"I'm with Serpa," said Lisbeth Bonilla, as she stood in the rain with her
three children at a Serpa campaign rally last week in downtown Bogota. "He's
the candidate of the people. Andres (Pastrana) has always represented the rich."

But critics contend that a Serpa administration would mean four more years
of tension with the United States, future drug "decertifications" and the
possibility that he would protect Samper in investigations into the 1994
campaign.

Sanin, 48, a former ambassador and foreign minister, was considered a dark
horse mostly notable for the fact that she is a woman. However, by
criticizing what she calls the corrupt Liberal and Conservative party
"machinery," Sanin has surged in recent weeks and now appears to have a
chance at reaching the second round. She trails Serpa by only 3 points in
the polls.

Aside from restoring legitimacy to government, peace is the top issue in the
election. Leftist guerrillas, who number about 15,000, are present in half
of Colombia's 1,071 municipalities and have dealt the army a series of
humiliating defeats in recent months.

At the same time, paramilitary squads have slaughtered thousands of innocent
peasants while hunting down the rebels. Massacres have become so routine
that they sometimes get short shrift in Colombian newspapers.

In a surprising move, Manuel Marulanda, commander of the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia said last week that the guerrillas are willing to talk
peace with the next president if the army withdraws from five souther
municipalities. However, the rebels are growing in number, territorial
control and wealth and may have little to gain from negotiations.

Analysts also question whether the next government will be able to make much
of a difference when it comes to other seeming intractable issues like drug
trafficking, rampant kidnappings and an increasingly lawless atmosphere in
the countryside.

Last year, Colombia report 31,000 killings, roughly the same number as in
the United States which has seven times the population. According to a
government report, 99.5 percent of the crimes are never prosecuted.

"Things are getting worse said a Canadian diplomat. "A new president may
give the people some oxygen. New faces will least make them feel that there
chance to do something. But most of the problems are running along on their
own dynamic."

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett