Colombia’s illiberal democracy

Recently the Economist magazine stated that
Colombia
was edging towards autocracy
if Uribe served a third term. This may be
a
ludicrous statement for the 59 percent of the population who would vote
for Uribe
again. And it may be an understatement for the majority of the
intellectual
community and political analysts who write op-ed columns against
Uribe’s
government every day. However, the Economist failed to point out at the
extreme type of illiberal democracy that is being practiced in
Colombia.

Fareed Zakaria, who coined the term illiberal democracy, referred to liberal democracy as “a
political system marked not only by free and fair elections, but also by the
rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of
speech, assembly, religion, and property.” This signifies that constitutional
liberalism – liberal because it emphasizes individual liberty and
constitutional because it is rooted in the rule of law – seeks to protect
citizens from the coercive power of the state. Thus, constitutional
liberalism together with free
elections is an unalienable part of true liberal democracies.

Most of the illiberal democracies arise
from the lack of one element while practicing the other. That is, countries
would lack constitutional liberalism such as Russia
and others free and fair elections such as Singapore. Naturally Colombia, in
light of all its idiosyncrasies, lacks both.

Colombia’s
elections are far from free or fair. In the current Congress, more than 70 lawmakers – 85 per cent belonging to political
parties supporting Uribe’s government – are being investigated for alleged ties
with the paramilitaries, and 31 of them are either detained or already serving
time in jail. These pacts with the paramilitaries secured their elections by
intimidating and assassinating adversaries, coercing the population to
vote for them, and funding their campaigns. Moreover, regarding the 2007 regional elections there were 20 murdered candidates.

In
terms of the separation of powers, Colombia is the typical case where
the government’s discourse of being indispensable for keeping the
population safe from the ultimate threat, the guerrilla, is able to
gain sufficient support for totally destroying the bedrock of liberal
democracy. The checks and balances embedded in the 1991 constitution
were doomed ever since Congress modified the constitution to permit
Uribe to run for a second consecutive term.

The
element that has deteriorated the most is constitutional liberalism,
which does not refer to the way the government is elected but rather
the government’s goals in which the protection of individuals’ rights
is at the forefront. It is not enough to claim that there is freedom of
speech, assembly, religion and property. To some extent, these are
irrelevant if there is not an independent and impartial rule of law and
protection of human rights. The state, incidentally, engages in the
most atrocious human rights violations, either as a direct act or by
complicity.

Colombia has been praised for possessing one of
the strongest democracies in
the region, but perhaps that says more about the precarious state of
other
countries’ democracies than it does about Colombia’s “democracy.”
Thanks to a manufactured consent, Colombia edges dangerously closer to
autocracy.

Author Sebastian Castaneda is Colombian and lives in Hong Kong 

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