Justice has been served today in Colombia.By an overwhelming 7-2 vote Colombia's Constitutional Court rejected holding a national referendum to permit a possible third straight term for President Alvaro Uribe. The court found that having the vote- which was planned to be held in roughly two weeks- would be unconstitutional and a threat to democracy. Furthermore, the tribunal found illegal the "methods" used by pro-referendum backers to promote the vote including breaking finance laws and "irregularities" in the Colombian Congress.
A recent poll found that almost half of respondents would vote for Uribe if he were permitted to run again mainly due to his national security policies. Nevertheless, Uribe has been hounded by numerous scandals such as the "false positives" affair that implicated the country's military and the "para-politics" scandal. The latter has implicated numerous politicos and officials with ties to Colombia's rightist paramilitaries including possibly one of the president's cousins:
Mario Uribe Escobar, a former senator, was detained following an order from the Colombian Supreme Court...Online Sources - BBC News, El Espectador, El Tiempo, Angus Reid Monitor, Plan Colombia and Beyond
Mario Uribe, who denies any wrongdoing, was detained for several months in 2008 but subsequently released for lack of evidence linking him to paramilitaries...
Former paramilitary leaders have alleged that Mario Uribe conspired with their groups in the 1990s to take over farmland in agriculturally rich regions of Colombia that were under paramilitary control.
Image - BBC News
2 comments:
Striking down the referendum is the right thing to do. Two terms for any country in LA is quite enough, as Venezuela is finding out to its woe. Had Uribe returned for a third term, Colombia would have found that out itself.
I think Uribe did a reasonably good job of keeping the country, its society and economy stable, if not growing over the last eight years.
Still, the poisonous para-military-government hydra continues to flourish. If Colombia ever hopes to truly break out of its violent and corrupt cultural paradigm, a national leader will have to appear who can and/and will crush all of these snakes, once and for all.
...And the odds on that happening? Not good, a estas alturas, I'm afraid. With the possible exception of Fajardo from Medellin, I don't see any of Uribe's successors doing anything to deal with what I think are the root problems in the country...
Limitations to the Power of Rulers : Absolutism and Despotism : Montesquieu, Montaigne, and La Boétie - Glory of Ancient French Political Philosophy
The Colombian Constitutional Court forbids further discussions in the future for all presidents about prolonging their mandates, as Anti-Constitutional, Opposed to the Laws, and against Tradition, History and Customs.
The President of Colombia Alvaro Uribe and his Pocket Congress have subjected and submitted to the power of the Constitutional Court.
And the most intellectual newspapers and magazines resurrect the Glories of Ancient France : Montesquieu, Montaigne, and La Boétie.
Montesquieu (1689 – 1755) is the theoretician of "Separation of Powers" : Executive, Legislative and Judiciary. But there were two Great French Philosophers of Political Theory before him.
With Help from Wikipedia, let us study these two Great Men - I extract very few excerpts from long articles in that wonderful Encyclopedia :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_de_La_Bo%C3%A9tie
Étienne de La Boétie (1530 – 1563) :
La Boétie was a French judge, writer, political philosopher and friend of Montaigne, author of the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (Discours de la servitude volontaire)
He served with Montaigne in the Bordeaux parlement and is immortalized in Montaigne's essay on friendship. La Boétie’s writings include a few sonnets, translations from the classics, and an essay attacking absolute monarchy and tyranny in general, Discours de la servitude volontaire ou le Contr'un (Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, or the Anti-Dictator).
The essay asserts that tyrants have power because the people give it to them. Liberty has been abandoned once by society, which afterward stayed corrupted and prefers the slavery of the courtesan to the freedom of one who refuses to dominate as he refuses to obey. Thus, La Boétie linked together obedience and domination, a relationship which would be later theorised by latter anarchist thinkers. By advocating a solution of simply refusing to support the tyrant, he became one of the earliest advocates of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance.
It was once thought, following Montaigne's claims, that La Boétie wrote the essay in 1549 at the age of eighteen but recent authorities argue that it is "likely that the Discourse was written in 1552 or 1553, at the age of twenty-two, while La Boétie was at the university."[2] The essay was circulated privately and not published until 1576 after La Boétie's death. He died at Germignan near Bordeaux in 1563. His last days are described in a long letter from Montaigne to his own father.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_de_Montaigne
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533 – 1592) :
Montaigne had a direct influence on writers the world over, including René Descartes[2], Blaise Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stefan Zweig, Eric Hoffer[3], Isaac Asimov, and perhaps William Shakespeare (see section "Related Writers and Influence" below).
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The spirit of freely entertaining doubt which began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, 'Que sais-je?' ('What do I know?'). Remarkably modern even to readers today, Montaigne's attempt to examine the world through the lens of the only thing he can depend on implicitly — his own judgment — makes him more accessible to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance.[citation needed] Much of modern literary non-fiction has found inspiration in Montaigne and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his masterful balance of intellectual knowledge and personal story-telling.
The Future of Foreign Policies :
Prophesizing.com
Vicente Duque
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