already posted in this forum several times since it was written to inform readers who hadn't known about it, while of course corporate media was keeping ALL of this buried, under wraps, out of sight, as if it had never happened:
COLOMBIA: "Mark Him on the Ballot – The One Wearing Glasses"
By Constanza Vieira
. . .
What convinced the villagers to vote for Uribe? "Because the region where we live is poor, very poor, it’s so difficult to find work, and when I heard him say ‘I am going to work for the poor, I am going to help them,’ I thought ‘this is a good president’."
When the rightwing president’s first four-year term came to an end in 2006, most of the villagers decided again to vote for him, reasoning that he just needed more time to reduce poverty.
. . .
The odd thing was that in both the 2002 and 2006 elections, despite the fact that the villagers had already decided to vote for Uribe, the far-right paramilitaries, who had committed a number of murders since 1998, when they appeared in the region that was previously dominated by the leftwing guerrillas, pressured the local residents to vote for Uribe anyway.
The paramilitaries did not kill people to pressure the rest to vote for Uribe, as they did in other communities, but merely used "threats," said L.
"If you don't vote for Uribe, you know what the consequences will be," the villagers were told ominously.
And on election day, they breathed down voters’ necks: "This is the candidate you’re going to vote for. You’re going to put your mark by this one. The one wearing glasses," they would say, pointing to Uribe’s photo on the ballot, L. recalled.
"One (of the paramilitaries) was on the precinct board, another one was standing next to the table, and another was a little way off, all of them watching to see if you voted for Uribe," she added, referring to the less than subtle way that the death squads commanded by drug traffickers and allies of the army ensured that L.’s village voted en masse for the current president in both elections.
"We form part of a municipality where there is corruption, from the mayor to town councillors, the police, the army and the justice officials – in a word, everyone. They are just one single corrupt mass. So what are you supposed to do?" said L., who added that the paramilitaries "control everything."
More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2008/05/colombia-quotmark-him-on-the-ballot-the-one-wearing-glassesquot/
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