Colombia Elections

Voters turned out in record numbers Sunday to elect Andres Pastrana to lead Colombia, firmly rejecting the administration of President Ernesto Samper, who spent most of his four-year term defending himself against drug-corruption allegations while the world's major cocaine-producing nation spiraled further into chaos. Pastrana's election is expected to markedly improve U.S.-Colombian relations, which have grown bitter in the past four years because of Samper's alleged ties to drug traffickers.

Former Foreign Minister Noemi Sanin on Sunday achieved the strongest showing recorded in modern times in this country by an independent presidential candidate, but she still lost to the two political parties that have governed for more than a century. The Liberal and Conservative standard-bearers will battle for the presidency in a June 21 runoff election because no candidate received more than 50% of the vote. With 96% of precincts reporting, Liberal Party candidate Horacio Serpa led with 34.

This country's next president will be the man who can solve a riddle worthy of the Sphinx: How does the candidate of an entrenched political party win the support of voters whose first choice was an independent running against machine politics? If either Horacio Serpa or Andres Pastrana can answer that question, he may win the 2.8 million votes cast for Noemi Sanin, the third-place candidate in Sunday's first-round balloting. Or at least enough of those votes to become president.

During two years of political crisis, Colombians have seen issue after issue--extradition, tougher prison terms for drug traffickers, the president's impeachment proceedings--resolved in Congress. It has been an eye-opener. "In the president's trial, the country saw on live television how Congress works, how rotten it is," said magazine columnist Maria Isabel Rueda, referring to aborted proceedings against Ernesto Samper in 1996. "People said, 'Something has to be done.'

The 1994 presidential and congressional elections were the most closely scrutinized in Colombian history--not by international observers, but by the Colombian media. Bolstered by constitutional reforms ensuring media freedom, television, radio and newspapers aggressively covered political campaigns and their financing. They kept up their coverage years after the polls closed, as prosecutors unraveled evidence that millions of dollars in drug money had found their way into campaign coffers.

At least five bombs exploded in Bogota, killing one person and damaging the offices of two presidential candidates, police said. The explosions occurred "simultaneously" in northern, southern and western neighborhoods of the capital, a police spokesman said. "There's damage to the windows and facades of buildings, and one street kid has been killed," he said.

The scores of Colombians, including civilians, killed during ongoing battles last week between the army and guerrillas in this nation's southern, cocaine-producing region are an unfortunate aspect of war, the defense minister said Saturday. "Colombia . . . has to understand that what is occurring is part of a confrontation where all of us must decide whether we are going to support democracy . . .

Sergio Cabrera had a hard time adjusting when his family came home to Medellin after eight years in China. A teenager who had been a member of the militant Red Guard just did not fit into the city's conservative culture of the late 1960s. So he joined the country's Maoist guerrillas. Four years later, Cabrera came down from the mountains to become Colombia's most successful director.

Colombian guerrillas seemingly bent on sabotaging Sunday's congressional elections capped the bloodiest week in 35 years of civil war with strikes in the southeast Friday, and an army counteroffensive reportedly left dozens of civilians dead. The violence came as the army began airlifting the bodies of soldiers ambushed in the dense southern jungle earlier in the week in a humiliating demonstration of rebel strength.

Despite intermittent rain and a campaign of harassment by guerrillas, Colombians went to the polls Sunday in surprising numbers to vote in an election that pitted traditional machine politics against a new wave of independent candidates. Nearly 46% of the registered voters cast ballots, a large turnout for Colombian congressional races. Four years ago, fewer than one-third of those registered voted for lawmakers.