MUST READ-COLOMBIA: Vote-Buying and Front Men http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50686

During Sunday's legislative elections in Colombia - in which rightwing President Álvaro Uribe's allies were the big winners - polling stations in one-third of the country's municipalities were at risk of violence, corruption or fraud, according to the ombudsman's office and election observers, who reported vote-buying and pressure on voters.As an editorial in the El Espectador newspaper put it, "Over the last eight years, Congress has been caught up in the worst crisis in its history."  There have been corruption scandals involving legislators swapping votes for government contracts or public posts, as well as the so-called "parapolitics" scandal in which one-third of the members of Congress have either been arrested or investigated since 2006 for alleged ties to the paramilitary groups.

According to a report by the Bogotá think tank Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris, 13 of the candidates on the electoral list of the U party are currently under investigation in the scandal, as well as 11 from the Conservative Party, six from ALAS and five from Radical Change - all of which form part of Uribe's governing coalition - and five from the opposition Liberal Party. Despite the legal prosecutions, many politicians have found a way to maintain their influence through relatives or friends who act as their front men. Controlling Congress through others is an old practice that was used by druglords like the late Pablo Escobar (1949-1993) of the Medellín cartel, Gilberto and Miguel Rodríguez of the Cali cartel, and paramilitary chief Salvatore Mancuso, who shocked the country when he boasted that the paramilitaries controlled 30 percent of Congress.

The Rodríguez brothers and Mancuso are in prison in the United States, to which they were extradited along with other paramilitary chiefs on drug trafficking and money laundering charges. Columnist Hernando Gómez Buendía said the next president would basically be picked in Sunday's elections, in which the big winner was the U Party, led by former defence minister Juan Manuel Santos. The U Party's strong showing Sunday prompted Santos, the poll favourite for the upcoming presidential elections, to declare that "Today the U party has won - the party of President Uribe." According to government spokespersons, the elections were the smoothest and calmest in 30 years. But foreign observers reported that vote-buying and fraud was as bad as, or worse than, in the last elections.

They also denounced undue pressure on voters, such as the threat of blocking poor voters' access to health care if they did not cast their ballots for a given candidate.Sunday's results also indicate that the phenomenon of "parapolitics" - the alliance between political and paramilitary leaders - is alive and well. The non-governmental Electoral Observers Mission (MOE) denounced widespread vote-buying and fraud, including scholarships in exchange for votes, ballots cast using the identity cards of people who have been forcibly disappeared, or people voting with other people's IDs.