July 5, 2007. Copyright 2007, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Alvaro Uribe determined to clean up ColombiaÕs poor image
By Joanna Griffin

LONDON, July 5, Graphic News:  ColombiaÕs President Alvaro Uribe is widely acknowledged to have made significant progress on cleaning up a country long mired in a dirty civil war and drugs trade, but it remains to be seen whether he can ever remove the stain on its political establishment.

Since he took office in 2002, Uribe has won plaudits for policies that have forced rebels from the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) back into rural areas, and led to the demobilisation of thousands of right-wing paramilitaries that combat them. As a result, Colombia is largely safer and more prosperous than for decades.

As thanks for alleviating the violence that has plagued their everyday lives for decades, in 2006 Colombian voters handed Uribe a landslide victory and a second four-year term, marking the first time a candidate had ever won outright victory in a presidential ballot.

Elsewhere, however, the graduate of Harvard is not so popular: President George W. Bush is an ally -- Uribe is a rare rightwing leader in a region that is enjoying a resurgence of the left -- but other leading U.S. political figures disapprove of a president whom they allege has colluded with drugs traffickers and death squads. Many Democrats want to slash the more than $600 million in military aid the U.S. donates to ColombiaÕs war on terrorism.

But whatever questions linger over his past, there is no doubting the dutiful UribeÕs motivation. His determination to tackle the mass violence in part stems from personal reasons: in 1983 his wealthy father was gunned down by FARC guerrillas during a botched kidnap attempt at the family ranch.

Born in Medellin on July 4, 1952, Uribe graduated in law before studying both at Harvard and Oxford University. In 1982 he was briefly mayor of Medellin, but his political career with the Colombian Liberal Party began in earnest after his fatherÕs death. His two stints as senator (1986-1984) attracted criticism and praise for labour reforms, but it is his term as AntioquiaÕs governor that still casts a shadow over the hardliner.

As governor from 1995-97, Uribe developed his "communitarian" model under which citizens were encouraged to participate in decisions that affected them. The strategy was credited with slashing bureaucracy and improving infrastructure in remote areas, but the network of citizensÕ militias he pioneered have been linked to right-wing death squads.

In June he fought off fresh allegations of his own links to the death squads that murdered thousands of ordinary citizens after the emergence of a video that showed him shaking hands with a fugitive militia leader. Since last year no fewer than twelve of UribeÕs congressional allies have been jailed on charges of colluding with these groups.

So far, however, the bespectacled, workaholic Uribe remains a breath of fresh air to the majority of Colombians, who witnessed the failure of earlier leftwing governments to restore order to their society. As the murders and kidnappings have fallen away, prosperity has increased: the country is no longer a no-go zone for tourists and investors.

Uribe is married to Lina Moreno de Uribe and the couple have two sons, Tomas and Jeronimo.
/ENDS