Colombia Starts the Clock on President Uribe

As the AP reports, Colombia's Constitutional Court has ruled that current President Alvaro Uribe will not be able to seek a third term as President. For some time, the U.S. has seen President Uribe as a strong but fair leader, keeping his country together despite multiple threats.

However, many moderate and leftists inside the country (not only those who support leftist rebels), consider Uribe a power broker who has overseen the expansion of militarism as well as paramilitarism throughout the culture. While his critics argue that social solidarity and diversity might hold the key to peace amid a four decades long civil war, Uribe, backed by U.S. President Bush, instead chose the path of more guns, more raids, and more counter-insurgency campaigns.

Obviously, Colombia is a very complicated place. Half the country is relatively peaceful, save for the periodic terror bombing or gangland war, while the south is locked in a perpetual state of division. There is a huge subset of the population that aims for democracy and social progressivism, but which is very critical of both President Uribe's conservative militarism and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia's (FARC) narco-leftist war.

But this set of the population is often assumed by either of the two fighting sides to be in support of the other. It's a third, distinct side -- the peaceful middle -- which, if they play their cards right, might get a chance at a greater say in Colombia if Uribe consents to the legal ruling preventing him from running for a third term. The clock's ticking.

For more background on this, see a story by my colleague, E. A. Ospina, called, "The Triumph of Paramilitarism."

Photo credit: White House (Colombian President Uribe received Medal of Freedom from U.S. President George W Bush)