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Colombia - Government

The Colombian government consists of a democratically elected representative system with a strong executive. The president, who is the head of state, has the power to appoint and remove cabinet ministers. The legislature is a bicameral congress consisting of a 102-member Senate and a 161-member Chamber of Deputies, with all members directly elected for four-year terms. There are two main "traditional" parties, the Partido Liberal (PL) and the Partido Social Conservador (PSC).

In recent decades Colombia has enjoyed virtually uninterrupted constitutional and institutional stability, with only limited influence from the military. There is a strict separation of powers between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, with the Supreme Court held in high regard. The Constitutional Court can and does challenge the legality of both executive and legislative measures.

The Executive Branch, headed by the President of the Republic, is mainly composed of governorships, mayor’s offices, and ministries. Its role is enshrined in Article 115 of the National Constitution. A 2005 constitutional amendment allows the president to hold office for two consecutive 4-year terms [previously the President was elected for a non-renewable four-year term].

The Legislative Branch has a bicameral structure that makes up Congress, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Members are elected by popular vote and must be at least 30 years old. The Senate is made up of 102 members, two of whom represent Indigenous communities. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives is composed of 166 members: 161 are elected based on territorial constituencies (departments and the Capital District), and the remaining five represent Afro-descendant communities, Indigenous peoples, Colombians living abroad, and political minorities.

The Judicial Branch is responsible for administering justice in Colombia. It includes entities such as the Supreme Court of Justice, the Constitutional Court, the Council of State, the Superior Council of the Judiciary, Special Jurisdictions, and the Office of the Attorney General, which is an affiliated body.

Autonomous public entities are institutions that serve the State. These include oversight bodies such as the Public Ministry or Procuraduría, the Office of the Comptroller General, the National Electoral Council, and the Banco de la República.

The 1991 constitution brought major reforms to Colombia's political institutions. While the new constitution preserved a presidential, three-branch system of government, it created institutions such as the Inspector General, a Human Rights Ombudsman, a Constitutional Court, and a Superior Judicial Council. It also re-established the position of Vice President. Other significant reforms in the 1991 constitution provided for civil divorce, dual nationality, and the establishment of a legal mechanism ("Tutela") that allows individuals to appeal government decisions affecting their constitutional rights and defined the state as pluri-ethnic, creating special seats for indigenous and Afro-Colombian representation in the Congress. The 1991 constitution also authorized the introduction of an accusatory system of criminal justice to be instituted gradually throughout the country, replacing the previous written inquisitorial system.

Colombia is territorially organized mainly by departments, municipalities, and districts. Other special divisions include provinces, indigenous territorial entities, and collective territories. A municipality is a territorial entity organized administratively and legally. It is governed by a mayor, who leads along with a municipal council; both figures are elected by popular vote. Colombia has 1,102 municipalities and 18 non-municipalized areas. Positioned between the nation and the municipality, the departments are led by a governor in charge of the autonomous administration of the resources granted by the State. They have autonomy in handling matters related to their jurisdiction and act as coordinating bodies between the nation and municipalities. They are governed by a governor and an assembly of deputies elected through popular vote. Colombia has 32 departmental units. The districts are territorial entities with special administration. Due to their national importance, the cities of Barrancabermeja, Barranquilla, Buenaventura, Cartagena, Medellín, Mompox, Riohacha, Santa Marta, Turbo, Tumaco, Cali, and Bogotá hold this designation in Colombia. Provinces are intermediate territorial divisions between departments and municipalities. This administrative figure is not very common in Colombia. The indigenous territorial entities are indigenous local governments that occupy some departmental or municipal portion. Meanwhile, the collective territories have been granted to the Afro-Colombian population that predominates in the Pacific region, allowing them to organize in community and business associations. Several features distinguish Colombia's political system from that of other Latin American nations. Colombia has a long history of party politics, usually fair and regular elections, and respect for political and civil rights. Two traditional parties--the Liberals and the Conservatives--have competed for power since the midnineteenth century and have rotated frequently as the governing party. Colombia's armed forces have seized power on only three occasions--1830, 1854, and 1953 -- far less often than in most Latin American countries. The 1953 coup took place, moreover, only after the two parties--unable to maintain a minimum of public order-- supported military intervention. Colombia's conservative Roman Catholic Church traditionally has been more influential than the military in electing presidents and influencing elections and the political socialization of Colombians.

Some analysts of Colombian political affairs have noted that in the 1980s the military gradually began to assume a larger decisionmaking role, owing to the inability of the civilian governments to resolve critical situations, such as the sixty-one-day terrorist occupation of the Dominican Republic embassy in 1980. The military had become somewhat more assertive in national security decision making as a result of the growing and more unified guerrilla insurgency and increasing terrorism of drug traffickers (narcotraficantes). Nevertheless, Colombia's long tradition of military subordination to civilian authority did not appear to be in jeopardy in late 1988. When military leaders attempted to challenge civilian authority on several occasions in the 1970s and 1980s, the incumbent president dismissed them.

A contradictory feature of Colombia's long democratic tradition was its high level of political violence (six interparty wars in the nineteenth century and two in the twentieth century). An estimated 100,000 Colombians died in the War of a Thousand Days (1899-1902), and 200,000 died in the more recent period of interparty civil war called la violencia, which lasted from 1948 to 1966. According to Colombian Ministry of National Defense statistics, an additional 70,000 people had died in other political violence, mainly guerrilla insurgencies, by August 1984.

This violence included left-wing insurgency and terrorism, right-wing paramilitary activity, and narcoterrorism. For most of the fortyyear period following the 1948 Bogotazo (the riot following the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, in which 2,000 were killed), Colombia lived under a constitutionally authorized state of siege (estatuto de seguridad) invoked to deal with civil disturbances, insurgency, and terrorism. In mid-1988 many Colombian academics who studied killings by drug smugglers, guerrillas, death squads, and common criminals believed that the government was losing control over the country's rampaging violence. They noted that even if the guerrillas laid down their arms, violence by narcotics traffickers, death squads, and common criminals would continue unabated.

Scholars, such as Robert H. Dix, attributed the nation's violent legacy in part to the elitist nature of the political system. The members of this traditional elite have competed bitterly, and sometimes violently, for control of the government through the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, which changed its name to the Social Conservative Party in July 1987. These parties cooperated with each other only when the position of the upper class seemed threatened. Unlike their counterparts in other Latin American countries, Colombia's Christian democratic, social democratic, and Marxist parties were always weak and insignificant. Constitutional amendments and the evolution of Colombia's political culture reinforced its highly centralized and elitist governmental system. The elites managed to retain control over the political system by co-opting representatives of the middle class, labor, and the peasantry.

A number of Colombianists also contended that the traditional parties had impeded modernization. The fact that the guerrilla movement was still strong in the late 1980s, after four decades of "armed struggle," manifested to some scholars the elitist nature of Colombian politics. For Bruce Michael Bagley, the guerrilla insurgency was only the most visible "dimension of a far deeper problem confronting the Colombian political system: the progressive erosion of the regime's legitimacy" as a result of its failure "to institutionalize mechanisms of political participation."

Bagley also saw the legitimacy problem reflected in rising levels of voter abstention and mass political apathy and cynicism, as well as declining rates of voter identification with either of the traditional parties and the emergence of an urban swing vote. This view notwithstanding, since the mid-1960s the elites dominating the two-party system usually have accommodated gradual change in order to preserve stability. For example, Colombia took a major step toward breaking with its elitist political tradition and modernizing the country's political structures by holding its first direct, popular elections for mayors in early 1988.

Although some political accommodation had occured, the Colombian government was less successful in reducing economic inequality. During the 1980s, approximately 20 percent of the population controlled 70 percent of income. Rural poverty was particularly pronounced, with per capita income barely reaching half the national average. Analysts generally believed that these economic factors helped spawn political violence.

Since the early 1980s, successive Colombian governments have had to contend with the terrorist and drug-trafficking activities of left-wing guerrillas, the rise of paramilitary self-defense forces in the 1990s, and the violence of drug cartels. Three presidential candidates were assassinated during the election campaign of 1990. After Colombian security forces killed Medellin cartel leader Pablo Escobar in December 1993, indiscriminate acts of violence associated with his organization abated as the cartels fragmented into multiple, smaller trafficking organizations that competed against one another in the drug trade. Guerrillas and paramilitary groups also entered into drug trafficking as a way to finance their military operations.