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LATIN AMERICA |
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Alliance Formed in Colombia Against
Re-Election Referendum
BOGOTA – Colombian lawmakers, business
leaders, academics, students and labor
leaders have joined forces against a
referendum that could allow President Alvaro
Uribe to run for a third term in office,
former Foreign Minister Augusto Ramirez
Ocampo told Efe on Friday.
The Citizens’ Alliance for Democracy was
created in August to “defend our
institutions and our democracy,” Ramirez
Ocampo said, adding that its main objective
now is to impede Uribe’s continuance in
office beyond the end of his second term.
“Another term for Uribe would be a serious
blow to the country’s institutions and there
would no longer be balance among the
branches (of government),” the former
foreign minister said.
The alliance will file a motion before the
Constitutional Court – which must rule on
whether the referendum law is in accordance
with the charter – in order to “explain why
the referendum constitutes a serious threat
to the country’s institutional stability,”
Ramirez Ocampo said.
It also plans to ask the court to schedule
public hearings so the opponents of the
referendum can express their views.
The nation’s former top diplomat said that
if the court gives the green light for a
vote the alliance will work to ensure the
plebiscite – which would ask voters whether
they want to amend the constitution to allow
a president to run for a third consecutive
term – does not pass.
“If the referendum passes the hurdle of the
Constitutional Court, which we don’t think
will happen due to all its problems of form
and content, we would call on the country to
abstain (from the vote) as the best way to
defeat it at the ballot box,” Ramirez Ocampo
said.
He stressed the pluralist nature of the
alliance, which is composed of close to 70
civil society organizations and “is working
to defend the essence of the Colombian
constitution.”
The conservative Uribe, who enjoys high
approval ratings in Colombia for his
administration’s success in weakening a
decades-old rebel insurgency, was first
elected in 2002 and won a second term after
the constitution was amended to allow him to
run again in 2006.
The second re-election bill has already been
passed by both the Senate and the lower
house.
Uribe has been coy about whether he plans to
run in the May 2010 election, although
members of his administration lobbied in
Congress for passage of the referendum bill.
EFE
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