Colombia's Uribe Seen as Solidifying Power

The specter of a third term has troubled constitutional experts who say Uribe is consolidating control at the expense of independent institutions. It's also generated comparisons to Ch¿vez, who is advocating changes to the Venezuelan constitution that would permit him to run for office indefinitely.

"Uribe has had the good fortune of having an American administration worried about Venezuela and Ch¿vez," said Myles Frechette, a former U.S. ambassador to Bogota who is supportive of some of Uribe's policies. "They have remained, publicly at least, silent about clear evidence that Uribe has autocratic tendencies and does not accept opposition from within Congress and the courts."

Mar¿a Jimena Duz¿n, a newspaper columnist who wrote a well-regarded biography of Uribe, "How Uribe Governs," said that while "there is freedom of speech" in Colombia, opposition groups feel browbeaten by the president's aggressive style. "Each day we see less of an opposition, as happens in Venezuela with Ch¿vez," she said.

Now in his sixth year in office, Uribe has allies in control of Congress, the central bank and the attorney general's office, as well as regulatory offices responsible for investigating corruption and rights abuses. His influence in the nine-member Constitutional Court, the nation's highest court, grew markedly after the Senate recently approved Uribe's nomination of Mauricio Gonz¿lez, his legal counsel, to fill a vacancy.

Carolina Barco, the Uribe administration's ambassador in Washington, said that, as in the United States, a second-term leader in Colombia has the legal right to name more officials and wield influence in appointments. She also said that Colombians approve, having reelected Uribe last year in a landslide. "This is an expression of the will of Colombians," she said.

Constitutional experts, though, said Uribe's second term has permitted him to accumulate the kind of influence framers of the country's constitution sought to avoid. "The 1991 constitution was created to balance the powers, but reelection broke that balance," said Ramiro Bejarano, a political analyst and former director of the state intelligence service.

A one-term leader, for instance, would have named only three of the seven central bank board members. But Uribe has appointed three already and may appoint as many as four more. Uribe will also, in this second term, directly nominate two more Constitutional Court judges.

In the constitution, "there was a strong effort to control and counterbalance the president," said Rodrigo Uprimny, director of DeJusticia, a Bogota research institute that studies constitutional issues and receives aid from the United States. "What makes his influence so decisive is the combination of reelection and a strong congressional majority."

Santos, the vice president, disagrees with suggestions that Uribe has excessive influence, saying Colombia's institutions are independent. "What's been very strong here is the separation of powers," he said.

And, to be sure, perhaps the most prominent independent institution in Colombia is now the Supreme Court, which has been investigating ties between paramilitary groups and members of Congress, most of them allies of the president.

Political analysts say independence may have prompted Uribe to recently accuse the court's lead investigator of conspiring against him. Court officials characterized the president's words as inappropriate interference and lashed back.

"It was an obstruction, a way of delegitimizing the work of the court," Cesar Julio Valencia, the court's president, said in an interview. "The principle of the separation of powers implies that the head of one can never inappropriately interfere in the role of the other powers."