COLOMBIA: PRESIDENT ALVARO URIBE HIT BY RESIGNATIONS FOLLOWING LOSS OF REFERENDUM.
After voters rejected his referendum, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was hit with a political crisis as several Cabinet ministers and high-level military resigned or were asked to leave. When he took office, Uribe said his ministers would serve the full four years of his administration and that the fight against corruption was the top priority. After just over a year of government, five ministers have gone and corruption seems more prevalent than ever.
Uribe suffered a major political defeat on Oct. 25 when less than the required minimum 6.3 million people voted on his referendum's economic reforms, which were meant to save US$7 billion over seven years (see NotiSur, 2003-10-31). Final official results of the voting are still not in.
Analysts say the political situation has changed in Colombia following the referendum and the municipal elections Oct. 26 in which the left won important victories. "The government is weaker, it has less legitimacy, and...it does seem like there will be some rearrangements and shifts among the political and military elites," said Luis Carlos Valencia, head of the political science department at Universidad Javeriana, following the elections.
"Perhaps the president has not lost popularity, but he has lost some of his institutional solidity. Today Uribe is in a situation that many were unable to even imagine on the eve of the referendum," said Pedro Medellin, director of the Fundacion Ortega y Gasset. The defeat "created an unnecessary crisis, not so much because of its fiasco at the polls, but because of the attitude the Uribe administration has taken, and the way the results have been handled."
Uribe now pushing legislative measures
To compensate for the loss of the referendum measures, Uribe said on Oct. 29 he would ask Congress to approve tax hikes and would limit increases in public salaries. His proposed legislative package includes a 20% tax on pensions and an increase in the IVA (impuesto al valor agregado) from 16% to 18%. He said the government would also seek a portion of oil royalties, now benefiting provinces and municipalities.
But the unions have said they would not support Uribe's fiscal measures and proposed instead a national effort to redesign the nation's economic policy.
Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT) leader Carlos Rodriguez said the government was trying to get Congress to approve what the voters rejected. He said the measures proposed by Uribe were part of an agreement last year...
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