LEFTIST LEGALIZER ELECTED MAYOR OF BOGOTA

Voter Rebuke of Colombian President

In a stunning rebuke to Washington and administration ally Colombian
President Alvaro Uribe, voters in Bogota, Colombia's capital and
largest city, elected former communist union leader, harsh critic of
US policy toward Colombia, and avowed drug legalization advocate Luis
Eduardo "Lucho" Garzon as their mayor. The Sunday vote came a day
after voters nationwide handed Uribe another defeat by rejecting his
referendum on a package of "reforms" -- which initially included
re-criminalization of drug possession until that provision was struck
by the Supreme Court -- and austerity measures designed to raise money
to further prosecute his policy of unrelenting war against guerrilla
armies, drug traffickers, and coca-growing farmers.

Garzon, the son of a cleaning woman who climbed through the ranks of
the leftist trade unions to come in third in the 2001 election that
brought Uribe to power, garnered 46% of the vote against 40% for his
chief rival, Uribe ally Juan Lozano. Running as head of the
Independent Democratic Pole (PDI -- Polo Democratico Independiente),
Garzon has orchestrated the most significant political victory for the
Colombian left ever; this is the first time the Colombian left has
controlled the capital city. As mayor of Bogota, a city of seven
million, Garzon is now uniquely poised to challenge Uribe politically
- -- and has vowed to do just that.

But Garzon's victory was part of a broader rejection of traditional
parties, as voters in most of Colombia's largest cities voted for the
PDI and its allies or for other independent political formations. In
Barrancabermeja, PDI candidate Edgar Cote won the mayoralty, while in
Bucarmaranga, PDI-linked candidate Honorio Galvis won. In Medellin,
the mayoralty went to Sergio Fajardo, candidate of the Indigenous
Social Alliance, while in Cali, Apolinar Salcedo of the Yes Colombia
movement won city hall. Likewise, in Barranquilla, Guillermo
Hoenigsberg of the Civic Movement won the mayoralty. Uribe's Liberals
and the opposition Conservatives were shut out.

As a presidential candidate in 2001, Garzon openly called for drug
legalization as the only means of ending the bloodshed in Colombia.
"The best way to end this problem and the war it has brought us is to
legalize drugs," he said at the time
(http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/201/groundswell.shtml).
While Garzon did not talk openly about legalization in the mayor's
race, the focus of his campaign was a scathing attack on Uribe's
overall approach to Colombia's 40-year-old civil war -- inextricably
intertwined with the country's multi-billion dollar black market
cocaine industry -- and his increasingly authoritarian security
measures designed to defeat the leftist FARC and the drug
traffickers.

The message resonated with voters. One man, a 35-year-old
anthropologist, told Canada's National Post he voted for Garzon to to
give Uribe a slap in the face. "With Uribe you're either on his side
or you're a terrorist," he said. "Lucho represents a new
alternative."

"We do not like the economic direction that has been given to the
country," Garzon told a cheering crowd on Saturday, referring to
Uribe's reducing social welfare and infrastructure spending to finance
more war. "We believe that security policies must be based on the
premise that the citizens are above the military." Garzon also
appealed to the millions of impoverished Colombians living in the
slums of the capital. "We have places here that look like Versailles,"
he said. "But many people in Bogota still live in conditions that
resemble those in Calcutta."

Garzon's platform calls above all for negotiating an end to the civil
war -- the path resolutely not taken by Uribe and his US backers --
fighting corruption, more democratic and transparent government, and
improvements in public health and education services. And then there
is drugs. Garzon is blunt: "Until now, Colombia has not had a national
drug policy, but has been limited to accepting in an uncritical and
automatic fashion the American prohibitionist policy, which equally
criminalizes production, traffic, and use. No other country in the
world is a better witness to its stupendous failure and its human,
institutional, and environmental costs," says the platform.

Garzon calls for a new, national drug policy that would:

* Suspend the fumigation of coca crops immediately and replace it with
a gradual process of alternative development until farmers can be
weaned from the illicit but profitable crop. Any eradication programs
in the future would be manual, not chemical. Small coca plots would be
decriminalized, and Garzon would work with the FARC and local
communities to find "a solution to the problem of drugs in our country."

* Call on the international community to "rethink the concepts and
practice of 'international corresponsibility' regarding the drug trade
and overcome the current distortion that makes the weight of the
solution fall on the weakest link in the chain, the Colombian and
Andean peasantry." Garzon's list of international tasks includes
dealing with money laundering, gun running, precursor exports,
international organized crime, and asset forfeiture. "The national
drug policy promoted by the Democratic Pole is a policy against
terrorism," the platform notes.

* Drug use would be a public health matter, not a matter for the
"repressive apparatus." Personal drug use and possession would
continue to be decriminalized "based on the constitutional principles
of personal autonomy and free development of the personality."

A widely-distributed photo Sunday showed President Uribe glumly voting
in Bogota, surrounded by rifle-toting soldiers in the rain. Perhaps he
had just seen the ghost of Colombia's future.

Spanish-speaking readers can learn more about Garzon and his platform
at http://www.luchogarzon.com and http://www.nacional.luchogarzon.com
online.