Colombian left wins in major cities after violent campaign

Oct 29, 2007, 18:03 GMT

Bogota - The left-wing opposition to conservative Colombian President Alvaro Uribe swept important mayoral elections in Bogota, the country's capital, and the country's next-largest cities Cali and Medellin, the Central Electoral Commission said Monday.

In Bogota, left-wing candidate Samuel Moreno obtained 43.7 per cent of the ballots in Sunday's election, relegating former mayor Enrique Penalosa - backed by Uribe - to 28.1 per cent, and analysts expected the trend to be maintained as more votes were counted.

'It was a mature, independent electorate that showed that it cannot be manipulated by editorials, or by the comments of columnists, an electorate that reacted well to Samuel's proposal,' Colombian opposition leader Carlos Gaviria said Monday.

The left already governed Bogota since 2003.

The leftist performance in Sunday's election awoke the opposition's hopes for the 2010 presidential elections.

After a violent campaign in which at least 30 candidates were murdered, some 27.5 million Colombians were called upon to vote Sunday for 32 governors, 1,098 mayors, 418 regional legislators and 12,030 members of local councils. There were a total of 86,449 candidates.

'The report is that people are defeating fear,' former Argentine foreign minister Dante Caputo, leader of a 125-strong observer mission from the Organization of American States, said Sunday.

'There are problems, there is no denying that. But the important thing is that neither the threats, nor the kidnappings, nor the actions with homemade bombs have scared off people,' Caputo stressed.

The Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the extreme-right paramilitaries and other armed groups targetted candidates for killing in recent weeks.

According to observers from the Organization of American States, some 576 towns showed worrying levels of violence ahead of the elections.

For over 40 years, Colombia has been deeply troubled by an internal conflict in which drug trafficking plays an important role.