Brilliant!
Alvaro Uribe wants a new election. We all knew that. Now he's figured out a possible way to do it.
"I am going to convene Congress so that it can produce as swiftly as possible legislation on a referendum, that would call the people to repeat the 2006 presidential election," Mr Uribe said in a nationally broadcast radio and television address.
The decision relates to former Congresswoman Yidis Medina, who says she changed her vote to reform the constitution in exchange for jobs for her supporters.
Details remain scant, but I take this to represent a way for Uribe to get re-elected once more without having to reform the constitution yet again. El Tiempo has a similar take. Uribe says he wants to “repeat” the 2006 election, but we can’t go back in time two years, so it would seem that this election would “replace” the last one, and give him a few extra years in office.
It’s absolutely Putinesque. He needs Congress to go along, of course, so it’ll be interesting to see what the reaction is.
See Boz as well.
1 comments:
Greg,
According to the Associated Press Uribe is seeking only to legitimate the 2006 election (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iZYIfXzs1XOJVy71bGI_VxtXTDGwD91IJBP80), in the AP piece his presidential spokesman is quoted as saying that Uribe's
"only interest is to confirm the legitimacy of his election" for the term that ends in 2010. We will see what happens, but the court did not challenge the electoral results, but the process involved in changing the constitution. It seems that it would make more sense to somehow "re-vote" the constitutional reform in the Congress and then hold a new election. One thing is clear, Uribe does not care for governing institutions that attempt to check or significantly question his authority (or raise doubts about it).
Best,
Will
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