Depending on which way the legal arithmetic is read, President Alvaro Uribe has just been given, by the constitutional court, the go-ahead for his most important project -a referendum on drastic cost-cutting and political reform- or he has been saddled with one of the most improbable political challenges of his presidency.
There was, last week, a sigh of relief in Colombian officialdom at the fact that the constitutional court did not throw out en bloc Uribe's referendum draft. On 9 July the court issued a ruling approving 15 of the 19 points in Uribe's draft.
Then came the second thoughts. One of the four items ruled out by the court was the government's provision for voters to approve or reject the package as a whole. The court said that voters should be able 'to choose with clarity and vote point-by-point each question.'
Also thrown out was Uribe's proposal to extend the mandates of local governments, so as to save the inconvenience and cost of elections. Elections for governors, mayors and town councillors whose mandates run out in December will take place in October.
A personal setback for Uribe was the rejection of a hobby-horse of his that few of his own team share: the penalisation of drug possession for personal use -he intends to insist on this via congress.
A huge challenge. The government will have to persuade 25% of the electorate (about 6m people) to turn out -in a country where clearcut presidential contests rarely draw half of the voters to the polls. Without that minimum, nothing the voters choose is worth anything.
Even with that minimum, each proposal must attract 50%-plus-one of the votes cast in order to pass. Invamer Gallup surveys suggest that all 15 questions would be approved -but that only about 5m voters would turn out, rendering the entire exercise moot.
Other opinion polls suggest that most of the public has no knowledge of the content of the referendum -a fact the government was well aware of; hence its insistence on a formula of blanket approval or rejection, which would allow a simpler play.
President Uribe has put a brave face on the constitutional court's refusal to allow this. He quipped, 'This will oblige us to do quite a bit of pedagogy in these months.'
It is quite a challenge: pollsters suggest that it would take each voter close to half-an-hour to scan intelligently through all 15 questions and arrive at a decision -and this is more than the electoral system is designed to cope with.
There is not much time, either, to educate the public, as the legal window for this referendum is both soon and narrow: between the second week in August and the first in December.
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