Colombian president can't run for third term, high court rules

Bogota, Colombia (CNN) -- The Colombian Constitutional Court ruled Friday against holding a referendum that could have cleared the way for President Alvaro Uribe to run for a third consecutive term.

By a 7-2 majority, the judges ruled the proposed referendum "inexecutable," said Mauricio Gonzalez, president of the court. Uribe was to address the nation later Friday.

The announcement, made in Bogota at the Palace of Justice, was met with celebration, music and whistles from members of the Citizens Alliance, which had opposed a third term for the president.

"It's a total celebration," said one reveler. "We're inviting everyone to join us."

"The constitution lives!" said one demonstrator's sign. "Long live the Constitutional Court!"

"We Liberals feel proud of our institutions, which come out strengthened by this process," said Rafael Pardo, presidential candidate from the Liberal Party.

Uribe retains high approval ratings.

Speaking from the northern city of Barranquilla, Uribe credited his efforts with reducing the incidents of narcotrafficking and violence in the country and bettering the business environment.

He said he hopes the country's democracy improves.

"The only feeling that I have is a love for Colombia," the 57-year-old Harvard-trained lawyer said. "I hope that in the years of life that remain to me, I will always feel more love for Colombia."

Friday's decision struck down a measure passed last year by a vote of 85-5 by the House of Representatives that would have allowed Colombians to vote on a referendum on whether a president can serve three consecutive terms.

The Senate had passed a similar bill.

Uribe, a conservative, was elected in 2002 to a single four-year term allowed by the 1991 constitution. A constitutional amendment in 2005 allowed him to run for a second term in May 2006.

Uribe would win Colombian election: poll

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombian President Alvaro Uribe would win election if he ran for a third term, but if he stepped aside, his former defense minister Juan Manuel Santos is the strongest contender, a poll shows.

Uribe, a conservative first elected in 2002, has not said whether he will seek re-election in May. The Constitutional Court is about to rule on a referendum on whether to change the constitution and allow him to seek four more years in office.

Should Uribe run, 46 percent of those surveyed said they would vote for him, followed by former Medellin mayor Sergio Fajardo and leftist candidate Gustavo Petro, each with 9 percent approval, according to the Centro Nacional de Consultoria poll broadcast by CM& television Tuesday night.

Supporters are pushing for the re-election of Uribe, a U.S. ally who is popular for his drive against left-wing rebels. But time is short with only three months before the presidential ballot and some analysts see support for re-election slipping.

Local media reported a Constitutional Court magistrate has already recommended to his peers they reject the re-election because of irregularities in a confidential, nonbinding opinion that could lend weight to judges leaning against Uribe's bid.

Uribe has also been forced on the defensive for two weeks over his government's attempts to reform the social security system with a series of decrees that opponents have criticized as improvised and unfair to patients.

"Although the Court's eventual ruling remains highly uncertain, the balance of opinion appears to be tilting against approving the referendum of late," Patrick Esteruelas at Eurasia Group said in a report.

Even if the Court rules in Uribe's favor, there is little time to register his candidacy and for authorities to organize the popular referendum on re-election before a May 30 presidential ballot.

ALTERNATIVES WAIT IN WINGS

Should Uribe step aside or be blocked from running, a successful candidate will likely adhere to his security and pro-investment policies that many Colombians still applaud for reducing violence from their country's long war.

If Uribe does not run, Santos is the strongest candidate, with 18 percent backing, according to the poll. He is followed by Fajardo with 12 percent and former defense minister and three-time presidential candidate Noemi Sanin at 11 percent.

Santos is closely associated with Uribe's security drive, which has reduced rebels from the FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, to their weakest position in decades.
Fajardo is an independent who was praised for rejuvenating Medellin, one of the country's main cities.

Uribe sent troops to take back areas once controlled by guerrillas, and kidnappings and bombings have dropped sharply. Colombia remains the No. 1 supplier of cocaine, which illegal armed groups traffic to finance their war on the state.

But Uribe's second term has been marred by scandals over security and human rights, and the re-election question has raised concerns among critics and even some supporters over the threat it poses to Colombia's democratic institutions.

The poll surveyed 2,000 voters nationwide and had a margin of error of 2.1 percent.

U.S. Agenda May Delay Colombia Trade Deal: Minister

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Support for a free-trade pact with Colombia is growing among Democrats long opposed to it, but midterm elections and a full domestic agenda may further delay the deal, Bogota's defense minister said on Thursday.

Democrats seem encouraged by President Barack Obama's will to get the long-postponed deal passed to boost exports, minister Gabriel Silva told reporters in Washington after meeting with Senator Chris Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, an influential voice within his party.

"He is optimistic. The Democratic Party, in the voice of President Obama, has expressed the goal of reaching the approval of the free-trade agreement," he said.

But he said Dodd "mentioned this is a complex electoral year with a very heavy domestic agenda", referring to stalled debates on healthcare reform and pressing demand to create jobs.
"The dynamics in the Congress could be in our favor and that is how we hope it will be," Silva said.

Colombia is Washington's closest ally in South America and has received more than $5 billion in mostly military aid since 2000 to help fight leftist rebels and cocaine traffickers.

Yet negotiations over a free-trade agreement with Colombia launched in 2006 have been blocked by Democrats who complain President Alvaro Uribe's conservative government has not done enough to stop violence against unionists and human rights defenders.

Critics also say Uribe has not focused on stopping former militia fighters from organizing new gangs that murder those who challenge their control over local communities.

New York-based group Human Rights Watch said earlier this month the tide may be changing among Democrats, but the deadlock won't be lifted until Colombia acts to stop rising violence in the country.

Silva said the Colombian government respects human rights but does not share the group's findings, which he said were based upon partial facts.

Obama spoke last month in his State of the Union address about strengthening trade with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, two other nations also awaiting congressional approval of trade pacts, as part of his plans to double U.S. exports in the next five years.

An editorial published earlier this week by The Washington Post argued Obama should give the Colombia trade agreement a push to support U.S. exporters. If approved, the trade deal will lead Colombia to eliminate most tariffs on U.S. exports.

Colombia's health reforms: Shock Treatment

President Uribe tries to push through some much-needed changes

AS ALLIES of Barack Obama seek procedural tricks to slip his health reforms through a truculent Congress, his Colombian counterpart, Álvaro Uribe, is not bothering with such niceties. He has simply issued a set of decrees ordering a much-needed but equally controversial shake-up of his country’s health service. The Constitutional Court, whose earlier rulings have added greatly to the health system’s financial stresses, is examining the decrees. Mr Uribe has begun negotiating with doctors and other opponents over how they are implemented—but he remains determined to see them through.

There is little argument over the need to close the big deficit in the health service’s budget. Mr Uribe’s decrees include an increase in taxes on alcohol, cigarettes and gambling, and measures to cut losses from corruption and bureaucracy. But his critics accuse him of taking advantage of this financial emergency to make more profound changes to the way health care is provided, and with little public debate.

Doctors are especially angry at a decree limiting their autonomy to prescribe the best treatment for patients. Along similar lines to reforms introduced in Britain in the 1990s, it seeks to introduce a list of approved drugs and treatments. However, Mr Uribe at first sought to go further and impose fines of up to $13,000 for doctors who prescribe beyond what the list allows. Their strong objections prompted him to backtrack and promise that the new treatment standards will be only advisory, except in certain cases.

Another controversial decree, although unobjectionable in its fundamental aim, would equalise the benefits provided by Colombia’s two parallel health systems. In one of these, salaried workers and the self-employed have to contribute 12% of their earnings to health plans run by managed-care organisations similar to those in the United States. The poor and unemployed get care from a second, subsidised system with fewer benefits and generally deficient service. A study in 2008 found that a quarter of those supposedly covered by the subsidised regime did not receive medical attention when they needed it.

Things were set up so that the premiums paid by those in the contributory system would eventually generate a surplus sufficient to subsidise the system for the poor. But this was based on over-optimistic forecasts that unemployment would remain in single digits (it hit 12% in 2009) and the economy would grow by about 5% (economists expect 2.5% growth this year). Since the new taxes seem unlikely to raise enough money to fix the financial hole, the worry was that “equalising” the two systems would mean worsening the contributory system, not improving the subsidised one. Mr Uribe now says he is prepared to delay implementing this part of the reform if that is what it takes to maintain standards of care.

Besides the challenge in the Constitutional Court, Mr Uribe faces an attempt by two senators to block his reforms with a “patients’ bill of rights”. Trade unions are also planning to protest against them. The minister for social protection, Diego Palacio, says the president’s decrees have been “misunderstood”. But as Mr Obama could tell him, any health reform worth passing inevitably involves a struggle.