Alvaro Uribe, the President of Columbia, has been the best President that Columbia has seen for a long time. He was reelected in 2008 because of his outstanding spunk in his country and now in 2010 the people want to reelect him again. Uribe has evaded making any formal anouncment his intentions of wanting to be reelected. There is only one problem. It is against the Columbian constitution to be reelected a second time.
In Columbia his reelection has been fodder for intense debate with respect to both the constitutionality and legality of such an endevor as well as the practical connsequeces that reelection would effect on the funcioning of the country's political apparatus.
The Electoral Council and the Constitutional Court may well object the referendum due to both the procedural irregularities and strict rules which prohibit constitutional revisions that do not respond to a previous error in interperetation. The question that people are asking though is whether they should change the constitution for a great President that they really like, and dramaticaly change the law or not.
"The Electoral Council and the Constitutional Court may well object the referendum due to both the procedural irregularities and strict rules which prohibit constitutional revisions that do not respond to a previous error in interperetation." That is a beautiful sentence. :)
ReplyDeleteMy personal opinion(being the not-so-incredibly focused on rule following person I am)is that they should keep a good thing going and alter the constitution. If a piece of paper gets in the way of the wellbeing of the country and its people, burn it! Or, less rashly, white out the part that is about to ruin everything and use a sharpie to write something new. Maybe they could just insert an asterisk after the part where it says "only two terms" and then at the bottom of the page write "unless he is just a really great guy". Law is important to establish order, distribute fairness, and inhibit anarchy, but this law may cause more anarchy than it is preventing should an inept leader be instated instead of President Uribe.
Hahaha! Thanks Abby! When I wrote this I was tired and hungry so thank you thank you thank you for correcting me. There is another thing that is very odd about typing on here. You cannot paste onto the blog. So if you write it on Word, and try to cut and paste it it won't work! :P
ReplyDeleteExcellent job, Maggie! I'm personally of the opinion that toying with a constitution creates dangerous loopholes, but then again I'm err just a little bit on the side of rabidly paranoid. The question to me is not whether he deserves to be elected a second time, but whether or not having him be elected will cause future, less scrupulous candidates to exploit the system and remain in power beyond their time. It has been shown that such men won't stop from rigging the democratic process (*cough cough* Iran *cough cough*) to get what they want, and no matter how good a leader Uribe is, he can't live forever, meaning that eventually he will have to turn leadership over to someone else who might not have the people's best interests at heart. Well, unless the fountain of youth really is hidden somewhere in South America and Uribe has figured out where to find it. Then he's pretty much golden.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post Maggie! Sorry I'm only getting to this now.
ReplyDeleteOn this issue in general I'm inclined to agree with Wesley. One must think of the long term effects of changing a nations basic rules. After President Uribe is gone, the change will still be there, allowing for untrustworthy leaders to manipulate the system, and mold the nation to their interests. But, on the other hand, it is possible that the system wouldn't be misused. However, as I always like to say " Better safe then sorry"
p.s. This is Mary, I forgot to log in
I agree Mary. It will be interesting to see what happens though. Thanks for the feed-back guys!
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