Colombia Endures Campaign of Fear

Rebel threats torpedo candidacies

Bogota
By John Otis
Chronicle Foreign Service

By vowing to impose the death sentence on anyone who runs for office,
Colombia's leftist guerrillas have forced nearly 2,000 candidates to
withdraw from tomorrow's national elections, threatening to make a mockery
of the exercise.

President Ernesto Samper insists that the vote for state governors, mayors
and town councils will go forward. But the rebels' campaign their first
major effort to sabotage electionshas marred the nation's decadelong
experiment with grassroots democracy and could be the prelude to even more
violence during next year's presidential election.

On Thursday, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, kidnapped two
Organization of American States election observers and a government human
rights worker in northern Antioquia state, and they threatened to attack
vehicles over the weekend. An ELN communique said the three men would be
released after the election.

The rebels detonated at least 20 bombs in cities and towns across the
country Thursday and yesterday mornng. Two police officers were killed as
they tried to defuse car bombs.

"This is totally unusual and unacceptable," Santiago Murray, an Argentine
who heads the 36 member OAS delegation, told the Bogota station Radionet.

Samper has dispatched several hundred thousand police and army troops to
guard roads and polling places and has vowed that his government 'is
prepared to meet any challenge to hold elections in every municipality."

But through their death threats and intimidation, the rebels have persuaded
a startling 359 mayoral candidates and 1,520 town council candidates to
withdraw.

Dozens of candidates have been kidnapped or killed, and in at least 22
communities, there are no candidates at all.

All told, 153 municipalitiesor about 14 percent of Colombia's townships
have been affected. They include coastal towns in the north, southern
jungle villages and even outlying areas of the ca~

"The fact that there won't be (free) elections in 10 percent of the country
is very serious," said Alvaro Valencia Tovar, a retired general and former
commander of the Colombian army. "This is the first demonstration of what's
to come (in next year's presidential campaign)."

In the southern Bogota district of Sumapaza threehour drive from the city
centerthe entire slate of 18 candidates Eor the district council pulled
out of the race. The rebels kidnapped the mayor in May, and his appointed
replacement has yet to visit Sumapaz.

"The rebels told us we would become military targets if we ran for office,"
said German Morales, one of the council members who dropped his bid for
reelection.

"There won't be any election," he predicted, adding that his neighbors are
too frightened to turn out.

The government is already weakened by the guerrillas' highprofile
successes this yearthey forced the army to temporarily abandon a swath of
jungle the size of Massachusettsand persistent charges that Samper won
election in 1994 with the help of a $6 million contribution from the drug
cartels.

But it will look even more hapless should balloting fail to occur in many
areas; it would then be forced to appoint provisional mayors and council
members when the officehorders' terms expire at the end of the year.

After three decades of civil war and intermittent terrorism carried out by
the drug lords, Colombians are accustomed to violence. But this is the
first time the ELN and the larger Rebel Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC,
have forced the resignation of candidates en masse.

The direct election of mayors and town councils began in 1988 and gave
municipalities control over a substantial amount of federal funds. The move
was considered an important reform in Colombia's political history.

But as local governments gained legitimacy and power, they attracted the
attention of the guerrilla groups, who are Latin America's strongest
insurgent forces.

The FARC and ELN number between 10,000 and 15,000 and are now present in
half of the nation's 1,071 municipalities. As part of a strategy of
consolidating regional power bases, dozens of mayors sympathetic to their
cause have been elected to office.

"The mayors became a political instrument of the guerrillas," said
Valencia, who contends that local officials should be appointed by the
central government, given the warlike conditions in many communities.

Although the election of more prorebel candidates tomorrow would help the
insurgents, analysts say they have apparently decided that disrupting the
vote sends a more powerful message.

"Their objective is a show of force to demonstrate that they are an
important (political) factor," said Francisco Santos, a former newspaper
editor who is now a peace activist.

While espousing Marxist ideology, the FARC and the ELN rake in tens of
millions of dollars annually from kidnapping, extortion and exacting "war
taxes" on cocaine and heroin producers.

But the rebels' financial success seems increasingly to be working against
them. In the past two years, they have clashed repeatedly with rightwing
paramilitary groups that are expanding their operations into traditional
FARC and ELN strongholds in attempts to blunt the rebels' power.

Some analysts believe that the rebels are now losing hearts and minds in
the countryside.

"The guerrillas are impeding the elections in many municipalities due to
the competition from the paramilitaries for local administration," said
Camilo Echandia, an adviser to the government's high commissioner for peace.

"It may look like a show of strength, but in the long term, they are losing
a lot of territory."

Santos said the rebels' aggressive strategy could come back to haunt them
if they eventually make peace, form political parties and attempt to work
through the democratic process. "This is a historical mistake, a big
error," he said. "They are going to need those votes in the future."