Uribe’s Legacy

In a continent crowded with charismatic populists and noisy autocrats, Álvaro Uribe is an odd fit. Smallish, bespectacled, and poker-faced, the Colombian president is not given to windy speeches or fist-shaking. His circumspection might be mistaken for weakness, but Colombians know better. For seven years, they have watched Uribe operate, speaking low and striking hard, keeping opponents off balance, crushing bandits, and putting insurgents on the run. In the process, he has rescued one of the world's most dangerous and fractious countries from collapse. Thanks largely to his efforts, Colombia today is still a functioning democracy. Whether it can remain one, however, is an open question.

By Colombian law, Uribe must step aside in mid-2010 when his second term expires. But if his loyal following—the Uribistas—have their way, he will ride a wave of devotion to an unprecedented third term. To do so he will have to persuade Colombia's Constitutional Court to approve a national referendum on abolishing term limits, win it, and then triumph in the presidential election next May. Opponents are trying to block him through legal challenges, but all nine members of the Constitutional Court, which is expected to rule on the referendum in January, were appointed by the pro-Uribe Congress. Most voters also seem likely to need little persuading; Uribe enjoys an enviable 69 percent approval rating. But Uribe III, as locals call it, could be a colossal mistake, and not just for Colombia.

More than the president's record—he's delivered the trifecta of peace, security, and prosperity—is at play. What separates Colombia from its neighbors is a solid democratic tradition anchored in the rule of law. Manipulating the rules to suit political ambitions is a game most Latin Americans know only too well. Over the past few years, sitting governments of four Latin nations—Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua—have refashioned their constitutions to perpetuate their own rule and alter constitutional keystones like term limits, freedom of expression, or the balance of power between government branches. Colombians, however, tend to go by the book. "We have a historical duty to be different," says Luis Carlos Villegas, head of Colombia's National Industrial Association. "That means respecting institutions." Tellingly, it has reformed its Constitution only once (in 1991) since independence from Spain in the mid-19th century. Bolivia, by contrast, has redrafted its charter 16 times, while Venezuela has had 26 versions, and Ecuador just wrote its 20th.

The commitment to keeping Colombia a land of laws and not of men helped hold the country together through decades of civil strife and often crippling violence. A thriving court system, a combative media, and an independent legislature provided the checks and balances necessary to keep democracy alive even as the government fumbled with a series of feeble leaders over most of the past half century. But by the '80s and '90s, these shock absorbers were being sorely tested. Cocaine traffickers extended their reach into politics and the courtroom, buying off elected officials and eliminating anyone who demurred. Colombia looked to be on the brink of state failure. Marxist insurgents and drug gangs, often working together, controlled half the country, and violent crime was endemic. Cities like Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali were convulsed by kidnapping and drive-by shootings. Still, while other Latin nations might have rolled out the tanks to stem the violence, Colombians went to the polls, holding free and fair elections, preserving the courts and Congress, and letting the press do its job—moves that helped build consensus and legitimize government through the hard times.

Uribe was a little-known politician with a law-and-order platform when he took office in 2002. He promptly doubled the size of the Army and shook up the police, and turned the country around in four years. He ended the tactic of negotiating with guerrillas, treating them as outlaws and terrorists instead of political insurgents. And he became Washington's closest ally in the region and its biggest aid recipient, taking $6.8 billion to fund the aggressive anti-drug campaign Plan Colombia.

Bogotá's hard line delivered results. The military drove guerrilla forces like the FARC and ELN out of the cities and deep into the jungle. Under the government's ambitious peace and justice initiative, some 21,000 combatants have reportedly laid down their arms since 2002, and 30,000 victims of organized violence have received reparations. Street crime is down, too. The murder rate has been cut in half. Kidnappings have fallen 90 percent in seven years.

Uribe's opponents say the government has exaggerated the numbers of demobilized guerrillas and under-reported crime. But no one doubts that shock treatment has revived Colombia. Foreign investment has soared since Uribe took office; GDP has increased from $100 billion in 2002 to $250 billion today, while per capita income has more than doubled, from $2,100 to $5,700. "Peace has been the motor for prosperity," says Villegas.

Yet Uribe's achievements have come at a price. He has spent much of his political capital trying to tighten his grip on national politics, centralizing authority in the executive branch, and leaning on the legislature. He marshaled his congressional majority to push through the referendum on term limits despite fierce criticism and allegations of irregularities. Uribe has not been implicated in any wrongdoing, but his bald, if unstated, drive to remain in power is straining the fragile political majority he has cobbled together and poisoned relations with the opposition and allies alike. This will eat into Uribe's authority and make it harder for him to govern a third time around.

There is a less tangible cost to Uribe's successes as well. Whether out of gratitude or fear, millions of Colombians now see Uribe not so much as an able political leader but as an irreplaceable savior. While none of the half-dozen candidates to succeed him, from the hard left to the right, has proposed significantly altering his signature policies on combating drugs and violence, "there is no one comparable to him" in the pack, says Alfredo Rangel, of the Security and Democracy Foundation. Marta Lucia Ramirez, Uribe's former defense minister and the Conservative Party candidate for president, says, "We are creating the idea that Colombia depends on one person for solving our problems."

Uribe's fate is being closely watched in Latin America. Brazil's rising economy and the decline of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez grab all the attention, but in many ways the region's fortunes turn on this land of 45 million straddling the Andes and the jungle at the top of the continent. Though it is only the region's fifth-largest economy, Colombia has long been the model for the democratic stress test—an open, prosperous society that has succeeded in keeping some of the world's toughest problems under control. "If we keep improving and maintain unity, we will set an example for our democratic neighbors," says Ramirez. For seven years, that has been Uribe's job. Now Colombians will have to decide if they can do it without him.