ELECTIONS DIFFERENT IN WORLD'S NARCO-DEMOCRACY

NEW YORK - A TV ACTRESS and a former guerrilla leader will soon join
Colombia's House of Representatives.

So will some friends of drug lords.

The congressional elections held Sunday in Latin America's fourth largest
country recall the old question about a glass of water.

When it comes to democracy, is Colombia half-full or half-empty?

Some people might find it amazing that elections were held at all. There
were guerrilla attacks in nearly half the country's 32 provinces before the
vote, and 10 mayors were kidnapped.

According to a report from Belen de Los Andaquies, a town of 12,000 people
in the southern jungles where government forces recently suffered their
worst defeat in over 35 years at the hands of rebels, only 10 voters came
to the polls in a typical one-hour period.

Yet El Tiempo, the country's leading newspaper, pointed out that ``90 per
cent of the country was calm.''

``People abroad should notice the maturity of Colombian politics,'' the
newspaper said.

Colombia deserves to be noticed, even praised, for making the best of a bad
situation. But the weekend elections were also a troubling portrait of a
country at war with itself.

Colombia has earned the dubious title of the world's first narco-democracy.
If the drug cartels don't actually run the country, they pay for it.

At last count, President Ernesto Samper's Liberal Party seemed assured of
keeping its congressional majority, partly thanks to campaign treasure
chests funded by drug dollars and massive vote-buying.

Re-elected government MPs include Carlos Alonso Lucio, a friend of the Cali
drug bosses.

Samper was absolved of charges that he received millions from narco-barons
for his presidential campaign, but most Colombians, as well as the U.S.
government, which froze relations with him as a result, believe the
investigation was flawed.

Then there are the guerrillas, who have little hope of overthrowing the
country but have helped make large parts of it ungovernable. In the
ultimate irony, the rebels are now paying their way by becoming drug
merchants themselves.

Following this month's stunning defeat of the government's elite
counter-insurgency forces in the jungle, Rafael Pardo, an ex-defence
minister, wondered aloud where all the military spending increases had gone.

``While the guerrillas are strengthening their own military apparatus, the
state is losing the capacity to act,'' he wrote in an editorial for El
Espectador.

Others argue that capacity has been tragically misused. Colombia's bad
human rights record is getting worse.

Last month, gunmen murdered Jesus Maria Valle Jaramillo, a 53-year-old
activist in Medellin who had accused the army and leading politicians of
sponsoring right-wing terrorist groups which assassinate civilians.

Colombian officials believe they can no longer handle their problems alone.
``For the first time, Colombia has admitted we need international
co-operation to deal with our internal conflict,'' said Foreign Minister
Maria Mejia.

The situation seems untenable and yet Colombia remains, paradoxically, a
model for the hemisphere.

The country has been run by civilian presidents since 1957, making it one
of the longest uninterrupted democracies in Latin America. It is also the
only Latin American nation never to have defaulted on its debt.

And the elections show Colombians have not been cowed by adversity. Antonio
Navarro Wolff, who once led the guerrilla group M-19, boasted his victory
was a ``vote of protest against corruption and cronyism.''

Other new congressional winners, such as the actress Nelly Moreno and
Ingrid Betancourt, a former Samper ally, have been openly critical of drug
corruption.

For sympathetic outsiders, Colombia is a conundrum. Democracy has left the
country in a perpetual state of vulnerability to its worst impulses, but it
is better than the alternative.

Presidential elections are scheduled this May, and one potential successor
to Samper, who is constitutionally banned from a second term, is a former
military general Harold Bedoya.

His approval ratings are going up.

Bedoya, like his military counterparts around the hemisphere, argues the
country needs a strong hand.

What happens if frustrated Colombians agree with him?

Colombia needs all the help it can get from its friends. This is a
democracy worth keeping alive.

Stephen Handelman writes Tuesday and Sunday on world affairs.

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