The first cracks have started to appear in the public face of Uribe's regime in Colombia. Bogotá voters choose an openly left-wing candidate in the mayoral elections, Lucho Garzon who might be said to be in the style of Lula in Brazil or (without the military background) Chavez in Venezuela – this, despite the outgoing (and popular) mayor's endorsement of a favored successor. Perhaps the zero tolerance policy of driving street vendors off the streets generated too much ill feeling, and prompted a little bit of soul-searching amongst the Bogotá electorate.

Then, even more encouragingly, it seems as if Uribe's "referendum", which has been accompanied by an incredible propaganda campaign, has fallen at the first hurdle; the abstention campaign has ensured that not enough votes were cast to reach even the constitutional minimum required to make the decisions binding. Here's the BBC report (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3216941.stm) about it.

So despite Uribe's bullying of the Colombian public, with dire threats that the situation would only worsen if he didn't get his neo-liberal "reform" package pushed through (i.e. the right to do away with people's pensions and labor rights), he has apparently had his nose bloodied. Maybe his vitriolic attack on human rights and NGO's last month backfired on him.

I can only wonder how exactly the situation in Colombia could conceivably get any worse for the civilian population anyway.

:m: Peace.