Presidential elections were held in Colombia on 27 May 1990.[1] In an election tarnished by violence, the result was a victory for César Gaviria of the Liberal Party, who received 48.2% of the vote.[2]
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a sovereign state largely situated in the northwest of South America, with territories in Central America. Colombia shares a border to the northwest with Panama, to the east with Venezuela and Brazil and to the south with Ecuador and Peru. It shares its maritime limits with Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Jamaica, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. Colombia is a unitary, constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments, with the capital in Bogota.
César Augusto Gaviria Trujillo is a Colombian economist and politician who served as the President of Colombia from 1990 to 1994, Secretary General of the Organization of American States from 1994 to 2004 and National Director of the Colombian Liberal Party from 2005 to 2009. During his tenure as president, he summoned the Constituent Assembly of Colombia that enacted the Constitution of 1991.
The Colombian Liberal Party is a centrist and social liberal political party in Colombia. It was founded as a classical liberal party but later developed a more social-democratic tradition, joining the Socialist International in 1999.
The election of 1990 took place in the context of a long history of the tumultuous political environment of Colombia. After gaining independence in 1810, Colombian politics were dominated for thirty years by the conservatives, centrists, and federationists. Conservatives wished to maintain the role of the Catholic Church in society, centrists desired a centralized and powerful government with the authority to appoint leaders across the nation, and federationists wanted a nation composed of autonomous states joined by a central and limited government.[3] Eventually the Social Conservative Party (PSC) and Liberal Party (PL) gained prominence, respectively associated with the Catholic clergy and with the merchants/artisans.[4] After years of political violence and instability between the parties, they formed the National Front, which alternated office between the two every four years. This excluded leftist political organizations, prompting the formation of guerrilla groups like FARC, ELN, and the EPL in the 1960s followed by the April 19 Movement (M-19) in the 1970s.[4] Eventually, the elections opened up to competition, leading to 12 main parties competing for office in the 1990 election. This even included the then demilitarized M-19 candidate Antonio Navarro Wolff.
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with approximately 1.3 billion baptised Catholics worldwide as of 2017. As the world's "oldest continuously functioning international institution", it has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilisation. The church is headed by the Bishop of Rome, known as the Pope. Its central administration, the Holy See, is in the Vatican City, an enclave within the city of Rome in Italy.
The 19th of April Movement or M-19, was a Colombian guerrilla movement. After its demobilization it became a political party, the M-19 Democratic Alliance, or AD/M-19.
Overview
Colombia has a presidential, unitary system of government. The 1990 presidential election was the last to use a simple majority before the 1991 Constitution implemented a two-round, absolute majority system.
The Constitution of Colombia, better known as the Constitution of 1991, is the current governing document of the Republic of Colombia. Promulgated on July 4, 1991, it replaced the Constitution of 1886. It is Colombia's ninth constitution since 1830. See a timeline of all previous constitutions and amendments here. It has recently been called the Constitution of Rights.
Colombia is a diverse nation. According to the 2005 census, 3.4% of its population was indigenous, 10.6% were Black/AfroColombian, and 0.06% were Roma. The remainder of the residents are mestizo or Caucasian Colombians.[5] Issues in the election of 1990 were not split among these racial lines, nor was the election split among major religious or cultural lines. Instead, the election was influenced heavily by political assassinations.
On 18 August 1989 Luis Carlos Galán, the Liberal Party's nominated presidential candidate and favourite for the election was assassinated. On 22 March 1990, Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa, the candidate of the Patriotic Union (UP), was assassinated, resulting in the UP pulling out of the elections. A third assassination occurred on 26 April, when the AD/M-19's candidate Carlos Pizarro Leongómez was killed. Pizarro was replaced by Antonio Navarro Wolff.[2]
Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento was a Colombian liberal politician and journalist who ran for the Presidency of Colombia on two occasions, the first time for the political movement New Liberalism that he founded in 1979. The movement was an offspring of the mainstream Colombian Liberal Party, and with mediation of former Liberal president Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala, Galan returned to the Liberal party in 1989 and sought the nomination for the 1990 presidential election.
Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa was a Colombian politician and member of the Colombian Communist Party. Jaramillo started working primarily in the Urabá Antioquia region until 1987 when he assumed the presidency of the Patriotic Union Party (UP) after the assassination of Jaime Pardo.
The Patriotic Union or UP is a leftist Colombian political party. It was founded by the FARC and the Colombian Communist Party in 1985, as part of the peace negotiations that the guerrillas held with the Conservative Belisario Betancur administration. The party was subject to political violence from drug lords, paramilitaries and security forces agents during the mid-1980s, leading to its eventual decline, virtual disappearance and extermination.
Although the election would ultimately be between the Liberal party’s Gaviria and the National Salvation Movement’s Alvaro Gómez Hurtado, both the Democratic Alliance M-19 and the Socialist Conservative Party held a considerable portion of the final votes. The Democratic Alliance M-19 candidate was Alvaro Navarro Wolff and the Socialist Conservative Party was represented by candidate Rodrigo Hernán Lloreda Caicedo.
Political Violence
On October 11, 1987, candidate Jaime Pardo Leal was assassinated. Then, the March 3, 1989 El Dorado airport attack then claimed the life of Unión Patriótica leader José Antequera and injured future president Ernesto Samper. The arguably most critical event took place on August 19, 1989 when Galán was shot on stage during a rally.[6] After these assassinations, it was César Gaviria who took Galán’s place as Liberal Party candidate for the presidency. A failed assassination attempt on Gaviria resulted in the bombing of Avianca Flight 203, claiming the lives of 107.[7] This event bolstered support for Gaviria, who took a hard anti-trafficker political stance and supported extradition of traffickers to prison in the United States. This was a blow to the drug lords, who had done their best to stop any pro-extradition candidate from getting into office.[8]
Campaign Environment
On March 11, 1990, the day of the primary election, M-19 announced their disarmament and quickly emptied their weapons, burned their uniforms, and turned in their rifles and machine guns to be melted down before abandoning their hideouts. They also signed a peace treaty with the current president, Virgilio Barco Vargas.They later inserted themselves into the election as a political party.[9]
After taking over Galán’s campaign, Gaviria secured a prominent 59.9% majority in the primary election, making him the Liberal party’s clear choice.[10] Throughout his campaign, which pushed for anti-drug trafficking policy, Gaviria set out for a presidency targeting a war against the drug lords plaguing Colombia. Out of all major campaigns, Gaviria made it most clear that he would make no accommodations for those involved in the industry.[11] However, Gaviria's anti-drug policies gained him numerous death and terror threats. Following Galán’s death, Gaviria became significantly less accessible. He hardly made public appearances and instead restricted his campaign almost entirely to television. He kept his apartment with barrels blocking the street, armed soldiers, sniffer dogs, and policemen checking all visitors with metal detectors. The political and social atmospheres were made tense with the threats of violence maintaining a strong hold over the perception of the election. But despite the tension, most were pleased with his nomination.
The majority of prior polling predicted that Gaviria would win the presidential election after exit polls, following his strong win as the ruling Liberal Party’s candidate, showed Gaviria with a large lead over his opposition Hernando Duran Dussan and Ernesto Samper.[12]
The election itself went smoothly, with no actual violence on election day. However, M-19 won 13% of the vote on its first time on the ballot. After the election, Gaviria promised to uphold a campaign pledge to give M-19 a Cabinet post.[9]
Prior to the 1990 election, Colombian citizens had been fighting for constitutional reform for many years. The 1990 Presidential election strongly helped in creating the new 1991 Colombian Constitution. In March 1990, university students called for voters to place an additional ballot in the March 1990 congressional elections if they wished for a new constitution. Over a million of said ballots were deposited. Additionally, the 1990 Presidential elections were the first that allowed Colombian voters to pick their presidential candidate from a "tarjeton", a card that had both the names and pictures printed of all presidential candidates available in the voting booth. This was a switch from prior elections where voters would walk into the voting booth with their candidate's ballot in hand, a practice long known to contribute to widespread vote-buying by local party bosses.
Following the elections, the Colombian National Constituent Assembly was created in the first semester of 1991 and was put in charge of reforming the constitution. On June 8, Gaviria and the Constitutional Assembly dissolved the 1990 voted in Congress and re-held elections on October 27, 1991. On July 4 the new Colombian Constitution was drafted and ratified by the Consistutent Assembly and combined almost two decades of political reform efforts by both presidents, parties, and citizens. Notable changes the new constitution created included modifying it so that a party only needed to win one seat in either the house of Congress or have one of its candidates win at least 50,000 votes to gain legal recognition, designating that the Senate would be elected nationally instead of on the departmental level, and incorporating unseen guarantees of indigenous rights that encompassed two reserved seats in the Senate as well as representation in Congress.[10]
Related Research Articles
The history of Colombia includes the settlements and society by indigenous peoples, most notably, the Muisca Confederation, Quimbaya Civilization, and Tairona Chiefdoms; the Spanish arrived in 1499 and initiated a period of conquest and colonization, most noteworthy being Spanish conquest of the Muisca; ultimately creating the Viceroyalty of New Granada, with its capital at Bogotá. Independence from Spain was won in 1819, but by 1830 the "Gran Colombia" Federation was dissolved. What is now Colombia and Panama emerged as the Republic of New Granada. The new nation experimented with federalism as the Granadine Confederation (1858), and then the United States of Colombia (1863), before the Republic of Colombia was finally declared in 1886. Panama seceded in 1903. Since the 1960s, the country has suffered from an asymmetric low-intensity armed conflict, which escalated in the 1990s, but then decreased from 2005 onward. The legacy of Colombia's history has resulted in one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse countries in the world giving rise to a rich cultural heritage; while varied geography, and the imposing landscape of the country has resulted in the development of very strong regional identities.
This article gives an overview of liberalism in Colombia. It is limited to liberal parties with substantial support, mainly proved by having had a representation in parliament. The sign ⇒ means a reference to another party in that scheme. For inclusion in this scheme it is not necessary for the parties to have labeled themselves as a liberal party.
Colombian politician Luis Carlos Galán founded the Nuevo Liberalismo in 1979, as a dissident force of the Colombian Liberal Party.
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Carlos Pizarro Leongómez was the fourth commander of the Colombian guerrilla group 19th of April Movement (M-19). Pizarro later ran for president of Colombia after the demobilization of M-19 that transformed the group into the political party, M-19 Democratic Alliance (AD/M-19). Pizarro was assassinated on 26 April 1990.
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Maruja Pachón is a Colombia kidnap victim and Minister for Education.
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↑ "The Autumn of the Drug Lord." Retrieved 2017-05-06
1 2 "Colombia polls inject new faith in democracy." Retrieved 2017-04-06
1 2 "Elections and Events 1990-1994." Retrieved 2017-04-06
↑ "A Staunch Enemy of Drug Trafficking Is Favored to Be Colombia's Next President: Election: Violence is the main issue for voters. Front-runner Cesar Gaviria vows 'no concessions' to cocaine barons." Retrieved 2017-04-06
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