Presidential election in Colombia 2006

The 2006 presidential election in Colombia was held on May 28 of the same year, in which incumbent Álvaro Uribe Vélez was re-elected in the first round with 62.2% of the vote. His second term began on August 7, 2006.

Constitutional reform 2004

Since 2003, incumbent President Álvaro Uribe has tried to amend the constitution to allow his re-election. He achieved this through a court order of October 19, 2005 together with the “Ley de Garantías” ( Spanish : Guarantee Act ), which was passed on November 1, 2005 and confirmed by the Constitutional Court on November 11. On November 27, 2005, Uribe announced his candidacy. He was the first President of Colombia to stand for re-election.

Candidates

In addition to Uribe, the candidates were the Liberal Party candidate , Horacio Serpa , the center-left candidate Carlos Gaviria from the Polo Democrático Alternativo and the former mayor of the capital Bogotá, Antanas Mockus , who stood for a small party that campaigned for the rights of the Indios uses. Serpa ran for the third time for the Liberal Party. The Conservative Party, the traditional antithesis of the Liberal Party, was unable to put up a candidate due to internal disputes; she therefore supported Uribe.

Álvaro Uribe ran for election together with his Vice President Francisco Santos Calderón .

Horacio Serpa , who was running for the presidency of the Liberal Party for the third time in a row, had clearly prevailed against Rafael Pardo , Andrés González and Rodrigo Rivera in the party primaries in March 2006 . His candidate for the office of vice-president was Ivan Marulanda .

The senator and former constitutional judge Carlos Gaviria Díaz , the candidate of the new left-wing party Polo Democrático Alternativo , competed with the writer Patricia Lara Sarive after surprisingly defeating his rival Antonio Navarro Wolff in the internal party primaries .

Antanas Mockus , a philosopher and former mayor of the capital Bogotá, who had made a name for himself as an independent politician, stood for the politically insignificant party Alianza Social Indígena . His candidate for the office of vice-president was María Isabel Patiño Osorio .

Furthermore, Enrique Parejo González , Álvaro Leyva Durán and Carlos Arturo Rincón Barreto participated in the election; but they all achieved less than 0.5% of the vote.

Election campaign

In order to continue to stand for election without a party, Uribe had to collect over 360,000 signatures by December 16, 2005, which he easily achieved with 1,318,262 signatures. Uribe's candidacy was supported by several newly formed parties ( Partido de la U , Cambio Radical, Alas-Equipo Colombia and Colombia Democrática).

As part of the "Ley de Garantías", which should prevent the incumbent from being favored over the other candidates, Uribe was only allowed to start his election campaign on January 28, 2006. He had had to actively withdraw from the public and media by that date for the same reason.

Pre-election violence

Given the over forty years of armed conflict and the Uribe government's tough crackdown on the FARC , the country's largest guerrilla group , many Colombian and international observers feared a wave of violence ahead of the presidential elections. In April 2006, there were attacks on the TransMilenio network in the capital, Bogotá, and an explosion occurred in a residential building in Bogotá, killing six people. On April 27, 2006, Liliana Gaviria, sister of the Liberal Party candidate, was killed after the FARC tried unsuccessfully to kidnap her. Compared to previous elections, however, it remained relatively peaceful.

During the pre-election phase, paramilitary groups invoking President Uribe were intimidated and threatened against human rights organizations. Uribe did not distance itself from these threats.

Election result

With 62% of the vote, the highest value in 80 years, Álvaro Uribe was confirmed in office on May 29th. For the second time, he was the first Colombian president to be elected in the first ballot. In absolute terms, too, he was ahead of all his predecessors with 7.3 million votes. Serpa achieved the Liberal Party's lowest election result in decades. The newly founded left party PDI achieved a record result with over two million votes. Observers therefore speak of the final end of the traditional two-party system in Colombia.

The turnout decreased compared to the last election. 54.89% of those eligible to vote did not vote; 53.53% did so in the last election in 2002.

Presidential candidate	Political party	Number of votes	%
Álvaro Uribe Vélez	independent	7,363,421	62.20
Carlos Gaviria Díaz	Polo Democrático Alternativo	2,609,412	22.04
Horacio Serpa Uribe	liberal	1,401,173	11.84
Antanas Mockus	Movimiento Alianza Social Indígena	146,540	1.24
Enrique Parejo González	Reconstrucción Democrática Nacional	44,610	0.38
Álvaro Leyva Durán	Movimiento Nacional de Reconciliación	22,039	0.19
Carlos Arturo Rincon Barreto	Movimiento Politico Comunal y Comunidad Colombiano	20,477	0.17
Total number of ballots submitted for candidates		11,607,672	98.05
Abstentions		230,749	1.95
valid votes		11,838,421	100.00
invalid votes		136,326
blank ballot papers		84.041
votes cast ( turnout 45.1%)		12,058,788
registered voters		26,731,700
Source: Registraduría Nacional del Estado Civil

See also

• List of Presidents of Colombia

Web links

• Elecciones 2006 Portal of the Colombian daily newspaper El Tiempo on the 2006 elections (Spanish)
• Summary of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation on the 2006 elections (PDF file; 209 kB)
• Semana Especiales

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Meyer, Heinrich: An announced victory that turned into a historic triumph for Alvaro Uribe - The presidential elections in Colombia on May 28, 2006. KAS Aktuell of May 28, 2006, PDF ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ Colombia after the election victory of Uribe by Bruno Rütsche ( PDF ( Memento from February 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ))
3. ↑ Registraduría Nacional del Estado Civil ( Memento of the original of September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.