Andean Group - November 2006 (ISSN 1741-4466)

President Alvaro Uribe's approval rating is at its lowest level since he took office over four years ago. Uribe's legislative position is also weaker than ever, and for the first time there are widespread doubts over the president's security policies. For a president elected by a landslide to an unprecedented second term in office barely five months ago, this represents a major sea change.

Behind the numbers

An Invamer-Gallup poll published at the start of November showed the number of Colombians happy with their president on the wane and the discontents gaining in number. Nevertheless, Uribe's support remains at a phenomenally high level: his record disapproval rating stands at just 24%, while 66% of respondents retain a positive opinion of Uribe.

Nonetheless, this latest poll is further proof of a downward trend since Uribe was inaugurated for a second term in August. The percentage of respondents who believe that the situation in Colombia is improving is just 40%, down from 53% in the previous poll and not much above the 34% who are pessimistic about the country's prospects. Some 63% of those who took part are unhappy with Uribe's response to the rising rate of unemployment. Even more significant was the decline in support for Uribe's security policies, the cornerstone of his popular mandate: Invamer-Gallup showed a 12 point drop in the number of respondents happy with the security situation, to 68%.

Farc striking back

The timing of the survey was especially unfortunate so far as Uribe's democratic security policy was concerned. It was carried out just days after a car bomb exploded outside a military college in Bogotá, injuring 23 people and doing immense damage to the possibility of a prisoner swap between the government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc), which Uribe was quick to blame for the attack. The day after the bombing Uribe stood at the site of the explosion and issued a vitriolic verbal assault against the Farc. At the same time he ruled out the government's "humanitarian exchange" with the rebel group and vowed instead to rescue the Farc's hostages by military means.

We suggested in the last issue of the Andean report (RA-06-10) that Uribe had allowed the enormous popular pressure for the prisoner swap to affect his judgement in his dealings with the Farc and that the guerrilla group had outmanoeuvred the president on the matter. The eagerness with which Uribe jumped on intercepted communication allegedly between the (yet to be captured) perpetrators of the attack and senior leader Mono Jojoy to blame the Farc for the attack made it appear that the president was looking for any pretext to abandon the swap.

Certainly not everyone else was so easily convinced; the attorney general said more than a week later that it did not possess conclusive evidence against the Farc, which has denied carrying out the attack and argued that it did not have the strength to attack a military establishment in the heavily protected capital. The military's alleged involvement in terrorist attacks in the capital prior to Uribe's inauguration has led to conspiratorial speculation that it might have carried out the attack, which occurred shortly after the US suggested it was ready to start reducing military aid to Colombia.

Yet the timing of the survey could have been even worse for the president; on 1 November some 450 Farc fighters attacked a police station in Tierradentro, in the south of the north-western province of Córdoba, killing 17 officials. This was the Farc's biggest attack outside its stronghold in the south of the country since Uribe's first year in office and shocked a nation which had grown unaccustomed to violence of this order under the president.

But it is not just the Farc's resurgence that is worrying Colombians, although the army's announcement that the rebel group had carried out some 30 attacks across the country in barely a fortnight was certainly unwelcome. Uribe's conduct has been atypically and disconcertingly inconstant; having called off the prisoner swap after the bombing in Bogotá the president then said he would still consider the idea. He rejected the idea once more after the Córdoba attack, but it would be unwise to rule out Uribe changing his mind once more. Sources claim that secret negotiations between the government and the Farc mediated by France, Spain and Switzerland had made much greater progress towards agreeing on terms for the exchange than most people had imagined possible.

What else can go wrong?

Crucial though Uribe's successful security policies in his first term were to his popularity, the president has been re-elected on the understanding that he will spend his second term devoting greater attention to non-military policies, especially social reforms aimed at tackling notable deficiencies in health, education, and housing as well as the shockingly high incidence of poverty. The saga of the prisoner swap, the Farc's attacks, and continued revelations about official collusion with paramilitaries have deflected attention away from this aspect of Uribe's second administration, though perhaps this is just as well as far as the president is concerned.

Whatever reforms Uribe intends to pass will have a much tougher time getting though congress than might be expected, given that parties founded on little more than their members support for the president triumphed at the legislative election in March. However, parties such as the Partido de la U and Cambio Radical have proved to be unfaithful partners, more interested in bolstering their own power than supporting the president's legislative agenda.

The squabbling between the various parties over plum jobs in Uribe's administration was unsightly, and those who lost out have since turned against the president. The president's supporters have argued that by rewarding the pro-Uribe parties with important roles in government he was respecting the wishes of the Colombian voters who supported these parties at the ballot box. However, this misses the point that Uribe doesn't have a party of his own for which the electorate could vote to express their support for the president.

Whatever Uribe's motives for recruiting the senior members of these parties to his cabinet, the tactic has not succeeded. The president is having surprising difficulties garnering legislative support for his reform of the Ley de Transferencias, a key piece of legislation which controls the distribution of funds from the centre to the provinces. At the end of October Uribe was apoplectic at the fact that congressional debates on the reform were not achieving the necessary quorum because his self-proclaimed supporters were not attending.

Meanwhile the Partido Liberal is proving an effective opposition, having shed the party members who split the party by supporting Uribe during his first term. Together with the leftwing Polo Democrático Alternativo, the Liberals will pose a major threat to Uribe's dominance at next year's regional elections unless the president can reverse the decline that has marked the start of his new term.