New Colombian political trend: choice

The last time voters in the town of San Onofre on Colombia's northern coast were asked to elect a mayor, they were given few choices. Only one candidate ran in the 2003 elections after potential contenders backed down under threats from the right-wing paramilitary forces that controlled the region.

Four years later, the winner of that vote is in jail on conspiracy and fraud charges in a burgeoning scandal over ties between politicians and paramilitaries. And four candidates from across the political spectrum are vying to replace him in Sunday's local and regional elections.

As paramilitary warlords and their armies have demobilized and Supreme Court magistrates prosecute politicians who colluded with them, politics in areas once controlled by feared militias are becoming freer and more open. But Sunday's elections will be a measure of how much paramilitary political power has been dismantled, analysts say.

They are the first local and regional elections since a scandal broke in late 2006 that connected politicians with some of Colombia's armed right-wing groups. The para-politics scandal, as it is known, has brought down 40 members of Congress, three governors, and dozens of local politicians – including former San Onofre Mayor Jorge Blanco.

Political scientist Mauricio Romero, who has analyzed the evolution of paramilitary power in Colombia since the groups were formed in the mid-1980s by wealthy landowners and drug traffickers as protection against guerrillas, says the elections will be a test of whether the scandal has hurt their political power. "It would seem that their political support has been shattered but it remains to be seen if they are still capable of getting their candidates elected," he says.

Before news of the scandal broke, some 31,000 paramilitary fighters had already been demobilized in a deal with the government of President Álvaro Uribe to give up their guns in exchange for reduced prison sentences for their crimes – some of the most gruesome in Colombia's four-decade-old conflict. Shortly after the leaders were jailed, the intricate web of political patronage they had woven began to unravel in the courts, leading to the first prosecutions of lawmakers in 2006.

"Four years ago you couldn't even suggest the idea that there could be another candidate that was not imposed by [the paramilitaries]," says Adil Meléndez by telephone from San Onofre, where he is running as a leftist candidate.

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