Colombians back peaceful presidency

Álvaro Uribe's approval rating keeps climbing.

AGUADAS, Colombia - As he stood in the plaza of this remote coffee-growing town hoping for a glimpse of President Álvaro Uribe, cattle rancher Antonio Jaramillo said the reason for Uribe's popularity was simple.

Before Uribe became president, life was chaotic because of armed groups that terrorized residents, Jaramillo said.

"Now we have peace," he said. "That's why we want him to stay for another election. If not, life will become difficult again."

A seemingly humorless workaholic, the bespectacled Uribe could be mistaken for an accountant or professor. But in places like Aguadas, the Harvard-educated lawyer is admired for bringing Colombia back from the abyss of violence and despair.

A few years ago, right-wing paramilitary gangs and left-wing rebels took turns terrorizing this town of 20,000, threatening residents, extorting from businesses, and killing at will, said Mayor Jorge Ivan Salazar. One of the victims was a mayoral predecessor, Oscar Trujillo, killed by unknown assailants in 2000.

The army's recent rescue of 15 hostages, including former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three American defense contractors, boosted Uribe's already high popularity. Several polls over the weekend put his approval rating at above 80 percent.

Now the daring operation has elevated the president's chances for a third term despite constitutional hurdles and criticism that he is autocratic and intolerant of views that differ from his.

Although Uribe has not said whether he will seek another term, analysts say that his overwhelming popularity makes his candidacy in 2010 a near certainty. He won a second term in 2006 thanks to a constitutional amendment that provided a one-time exception to the country's ban on reelection.

"It's what the country wants," said Maria Jimena Duzan, a magazine columnist who wrote a book critical of Uribe. "He has a blank check."

Uribe, 56, is the closest US ally in Latin America and a counterweight to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in a region where leftist ideology and anti-US sentiment are widespread. President Bush has welcomed Uribe at his Texas ranch.

Uribe's domestic support is founded on building up the security forces and restoring some measure of law and order, helped by more than $5 billion in US aid. A few years ago Colombia was slipping into chaos that has seen kidnappings and murders plunge by two-thirds since he took office - although the global cocaine traffic is booming.

Talk of a third term alarms critics and admirers alike who say Uribe exhibits anti-democratic tendencies reminiscent of a Latin American caudillo, or strongman.

"When leadership is concentrated in only one person, and this person stumbles, the country's morale may collapse," Senator Gustavo Petro, part of the leftist opposition in Congress, told the El Espectador newspaper.

Many see Uribe's drive to extend his power as detrimental to a nation struggling to cement a fragile democratic tradition after decades of instability. "The orchestra is playing very well in many aspects," said former Bogota Mayor Antanas Mockus, "but people only see the conductor."

Uribe has long denied links to right-wing paramilitary groups, and lately he and his allies have dismissed allegations of electoral bribery. Democrats in the US Congress have called for prosecution in extra-judicial slayings, including the deaths of scores of trade unionists since he took office.

Such issues continue to impede a US-Colombia free trade deal, a priority for Uribe and the Bush administration.