International Delegation Issues Preliminary Findings on Pre-electoral Conditions in Colombia

Americas Program Special Report

International
Pre-electoral Observation Mission | March 8, 2010

Americas Program,
Center for International Policy (CIP)

The
following is the preliminary statement of the International
Pre-electoral Observation Mission, presented Feb. 15 to the Colombian
press in Bogotá. The Americas Program was privileged to form part of
this Mission and participate in the extensive observations that took
place over a period of two weeks prior to issuing the statement. The
Mission is currently working on preparing the full report, due out next
week before the scheduled Mar. 14 congressional elections in Colombia.

STATEMENT TO THE PRESS

The International Pre-Electoral Observation Mission is an effort led
by Global Exchange, a U.S. non-governmental organization, with the
participation of professionals, analysts, and citizens of more than
seven countries including the United States, Canada, Germany, the UK,
and Mexico.

The mission is made up of 22 individuals with collective experience
of electoral observation in 11 countries. From Feb. 3-15, the group
conducted pre-electoral observation in Colombia, prior to the 2010
elections. We divided into four teams to observe conditions in
municipalities in the departments of Antioquia, Córdoba, Valle del
Cauca, and Santander.

The objective of the mission is to compile reports from diverse
sectors that form part of the electoral process, register the concerns
of civil society, and assess the actions of governmental institutions.
These accounts were collected within a country context where internal
displacement, violence, and the presence of armed actors persists.

The team carried out an intensive schedule of training, in-field
observation, and research from Feb. 3-14. Its members interviewed
governmental authorities in charge of electoral matters—the National
Electoral Council, the National Civil Registry, local Attorney
Generals, officials from the regional prosecutors' offices, local and
states Human Rights Ombudsmen, and mayor and state governors' offices.
We also met with representatives and candidates from the political
parties, political analysts, Afro-Colombian and indigenous
organizations, LGBT persons, youth groups, human rights defenders,
journalists, organizations of internally displaced persons, victims of
human rights abuses, and trade union activists.

The mission's final report will be available on March 10 prior to
Colombia's congressional elections. The goal is for the report to serve
as a catalyst for the electoral authorities and civil society to
investigate and take steps to minimize the electoral risk factors found
in the report prior to the conclusion of Colombia's 2010 elections.

Our international team had the support of the Electoral Observation
Mission (MOE), at the national and regional level. The MOE has carried
out the important work of identifying and systematizing electoral
risks since 2006. As an independent entity and working in conjunction
with MOE, our purpose is to strengthen democracy and generate
conditions so that citizens can fully exercise their political rights
in Colombia.

The International Pre-Electoral Observation Mission would like to
share some preliminary findings that came to our attention during the
visits we undertook to the different regions:

1. Human Rights Violations and Electoral Risks

The protection of human rights and effective justice in cases of
violations are key to ensuring that voters can fully participate in a
democracy in a transparent, free, and informed manner. The mission
encountered much evidence of an alarming human rights situation in the
country and the existence of grave violations of the rights of
residents we spoke to in Antioquia, Santander, Córdoba, and Valle del
Cauca. Violations were attributed to both legal and illegal armed
groups, and drug-traffickers. We also found that levels of violence
remain high, especially among vulnerable populations including youth,
women, Afro-Colombians, indigenous, internally displaced, LGBT, and
poor people. In addition to selective assassinations, the mission was
informed by different sources that the incidence of forced
disappearances has been rising, presumably to avoid inflating the
national murder statistics. This violence, and subsequent impunity in
many of these cases, prevents citizens from trusting the authorities
and leads many voters to decide against participating in the electoral
process.

In certain regions like Barrancabermeja and Buenaventura, the
mission was informed that despite an increase in police and military
personnel on the ground, citizens do not have an overall sense of
security and the homicide rate has been rising. Youth, indigenous
people, and Afro-descendants face stigmatization within society and are
often branded "undesirables." This creates a context of discrimination
in which crimes against these sectors are often not fully investigated
or prosecuted.

In various parts of the country, civil society organizations
reported that supposedly demobilized paramilitary groups continue to
act against the civilian population. They noted that an open strategy
exists on the part of these groups to persecute leaders of
Afro-Colombians, indigenous peoples, rural farmers, trade unionists,
and human rights defenders and their organizations. Those interviewed
reported cases of selective assassinations, extrajudicial executions,
and forced disappearances among the leaders of these groups.

While officials claim that the paramilitary groups have
demobilized, that they no longer exist, and that drug-trafficking rings
have been dismantled and now represent only isolated expressions of
violence, civilian groups we spoke to in the regions expressed grave
concerns about these groups' continued presence and territorial
control. Citizens reported that armed criminal groups are
consolidating, a perception that is shared by some officials who work on
these issues and who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of
possible reprisals for their statements.

Internal displacement and confinement (the inability to move freely
from their territories due to restrictions imposed by the legal and
illegal armed groups) are two situations that the delegations found in
all regions visited. Some local authorities expressed concern about how
slow the national government was in recognizing the status of many
internally displaced citizens and their lack of attention to this
population. In addition to the trauma of being internally displaced,
many of these people faced social stigmatization and are forced to
confront many institutional obstacles to their rights to protection,
humanitarian assistance, and access to public services. Many interviewed
noted that the period granted for the internally displaced to renew
I.D. cards and register to vote was too short.

2. Fear and Restriction of Freedom of Expression

Fear is widely present in all spheres of Colombian society and
serves as a factor that clearly inhibits Colombia's free voting process
and the ability to have open electoral debates. Individuals
interviewed reported fear of reprisals if they voted for certain
candidates, fear of traveling freely in certain geographical areas, and
fear of carrying out opposition campaigns.

Fear also exists among critical journalists seeking to do their job
and exercise their right to inform the general public. Independent
journalists brought to the team's attention the fact that they have
received threats against their lives and are put under pressure when
they report electoral crimes.

Freedom of the press is further constrained by the political
affinities of some media with certain political parties, which causes
reporters who work for those entities to self-censor. This leads to
unequal coverage of the campaigns.

3. The Presence of Electoral Crimes

Participation in political campaigning by public officials,
prohibited under Colombia's Law of Guarantees, is one of the top
concerns expressed by the different sectors consulted. Political
parties and citizens reported that some mayors, governors, and council
members have openly participated in campaigning for candidates. This
participation allegedly goes beyond expressing their political
sympathies, and the Mission heard claims that campaign workers and
publicity were being paid for through public funds, including through
the issuance of temporary work contracts.

All of the political parties consulted said that the "other"
parties or candidates were involved in buying votes, an electoral crime
defined as such in the Colombian penal code. This practice is so
frequent that citizens colloquially call it "tula millonaria" or
TLC (Spanish initials for tiles, bricks, and cement), referring
to the common practice of paying voters in kind for their votes.

To check if citizens voted for the agreed-on candidate, those who
commit electoral fraud use methods such as carbon paper, or cell phone
or digital camera photos to verify how a ballot was marked, as well as
employing a method of rotating marked ballots known as the "carousel."

According to community leaders and beneficiaries of the social
programs run by the Colombian Agency for Social Action, candidates for
the House and Senate have participated in meetings where beneficiaries
were informed that if they do not vote for them or for the governing
party, the subsidies they receive from the president's office will be
terminated. We consider it of serious concern that there is no
distinction made between the figure of the president and basic programs
that are designed to attend to the needs of displaced populations and
vulnerable families in the country.

4. Distance between Citizen Complaints and Actions Taken by
Officials

Colombian democracy faces many challenges.

We note that there have been advances in electoral norms and
regulations that will permit the strengthening of the electoral
process. However, there is a huge distance between the views of the
local populations and those of the local authorities. While many people
and all the political parties informed us that the practice of buying
votes with cash or in-kind payments is widespread, and numerous cases
of voter coercion exist, local authorities state that they have not
received complaints of electoral fraud.

This situation indicates that there is a rupture between the formal
aspects of the society represented in Colombian institutions and the
daily reality for the general public. It also shows the lack of
confidence that civilians have in their authorities, which impedes
official reporting of electoral crimes.

We found it troubling that many people affirmed that the main
reasons for why they do not report crimes are due to fear and impunity.
Democracy is not limited to elections but to the confidence that
exists between citizens and their officials. This must be built on
clear rules of engagement, transparency, impartiality, and coherence
between the mandates of the institutions and their practices.

Final Considerations

The International Pre-electoral Observation Mission considers the
tradition of participation in Colombia to be very important. We noted
in our observation in the different regions of the country that
Colombians have a strong capacity to organize and engage in civic
actions in areas of defense and promotion of human rights,
participation in the planning and exercise of local budgets,
implementation of community projects, and collective action on a wide
range of issues. However, persistent distrust of the electoral process
and the lack of basic guarantees means that the work of civic education
and elections monitoring is still incipient.

In this sense, the Mission considers that the work being done by
various citizen groups in electoral observation forms part of political
processes that seek to change corrupt practices; this requires
developing a closer relationship to the citizenry and greater
commitment in the exercise of power.

The Mission considers it vitally important that authorities take
decisive steps against electoral crimes, in particular to pursue the
continued existence of "electoral frontmen," where questionable
political organizations seek to continue to operate by changing the
names of political parties or supporting candidacies of family members.
While such practices are not illegal, they generate a sense of
illegitimacy in the democratic process and run the risk that the
Congress elected could be investigated and subject to legal proceedings
that greatly affect the legitimacy and credibility of the current
legislature.

The final report will include our full recommendations and
observations. The mission, however, would like to preliminarily
highlight the need for governmental authorities to strengthen the work
of regulating, applying, and monitoring electoral regulations.
Authorities report a lack of resources to be able to implement their
mandates. We also believe that it is urgently important that steps are
taken to eliminate the possibility of fraud and coercion of voters,
practices that continue to exist, according to the accounts we received.

The strengthening of democracy and the construction of electoral
processes that reap the benefits of having the full confidence of the
citizenry are only possible if Colombian society opens spaces for
dialogue and transparency, ends impunity, and eliminates current
practices of exclusion and concentration of wealth and power. The
current challenges for Colombian democracy range from more effective
control of the electoral process, to resolving much deeper problems in
society, including the internal armed conflict, violence, intimidation,
discrimination, and corruption.

The mission wishes to thank all of the civil society leaders,
citizens, officials, and local authorities for the constant support of
our activities, and the strong commitment to democracy evident in many
sectors of Colombia, despite situations that jeopardize the full
exercise of liberty and fundamental human rights. For all the people
who maintain the hope that it is possible to bring about the changes
that our societies need, we offer our solidarity. We believe, as they
do, that all change requires time, as well as collective, determined
action over the long term. It is this type of important work that
thousands of Colombians are already undertaking in their country.

Many thanks.

International Pre-electoral Observation Mission
Bogotá, Colombia, Feb. 15, 2010

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