Congress approves the referendum, now the Court has the final word…
Colombia has been preoccupied with the difficult question of whether to allow for the re-election of the president. An initiative to hold a referendum that would allow President Álvaro Uribe to contest the 2010 presidential elections only just passed Congress. President Uribe has already been re-elected once after the adoption of a similar constitutional reform in 2005.
The referendum became complicated when the version approved in the Senate differed to that approved in the House of Representatives. (The Senate authorized the calling of the referendum for reelection in 2010, while the House of Representatives passed it for 2014). The vote was further complicated when opposition members accused 85 members of the House (members of the government coalition who voted in favor of the re-election referendum in December 2008) of having criminal records which would thereby disqualify them from serving in Congress and render them ineligible to vote.
After heated debate in September 2009, it was decided that the accused members could vote and, with the help of other pro-government groupings, the referendum authorizing constitutional reform was approved. This would ultimately allow President Álvaro Uribe Vélez to be a presidential candidate for a third consecutive term.
Having passed through Congress, the reelection initiative will now be reviewed by the Constitutional Court. A large number of demands are expected from opposition parties, academic and social organizations that are opposed to a second reelection of President Uribe. There are two broad arguments against the initiative: on the one hand, those who allege that the referendum’s legal process was violated (the finance limits were exceeded, guarantees were not given to the opposition, the question’s content was changed) while others emphasize the serious damage that a second re-election would cause for Colombia’s democracy.
The Constitutional Court will have three months to rule on the constitutionality of the initiative. If the referendum is authorized, the Electoral Organization will have to organize the referendum quickly since the presidential elections will be held in May 2010.
If the majority vote yes in the referendum but voter turnout is less than 25%, the referendum will not pass and President Uribe will not be able to run for a third consecutive term.
New regulations for the coming elections
Following the approval by the Colombian Congress of a package of political and constitutional reform in June 2009, the federal government and a group of congress members presented two bills for consideration. These seek to build on new constitutional regulations about political financing and the internal democratization of political parties. If passed, the bills aim to have new regulations in place before the congressional and presidential elections in 2010.
Debate on the bills has been assisted by a series of workshops held by the UNDP-International IDEA Project to Strengthen Democracy in conjunction with the Instituto de Ciencia Política (Political Science Institute). These workshops saw the participation of Congress members, advisors, electoral authorities and academic and civil society organizations.
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