Armed forces chief latest to quit in Colombia

By Frances Robles
Knight Ridder Newspapers

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Gen. Jorge Enrique Mora announced his resignation just two days after his boss, Defense Minister Martha Lucia Ramírez. Late Tuesday, national police chief Gen. Teodoro Campo was forced out amid media reports of lavish spending by the Medellín police.

The environment minister also quit without explanation earlier that day. Controversial Interior Minister Fernando Londono resigned last week in a flap with Congress.

The shake-up has rocked the government of Uribe, a hard-liner elected last year on a vow to get tough on leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary fighters and drug smugglers' illegal armies waging civil war.

The resignations illustrate the weaknesses in his administration, experts say, and call to question whether a man known for strong leadership really has a grip on his government. But the crisis also offers the president the opportunity to regain control of a Cabinet known as much for results as for infighting and bickering, experts said.

"It's possible he wants to clean house," said Michael Shifter, a political analyst with the InterAmerican Dialogue think tank in Washington.

"If so, he's doing so in a clumsy way that suggests improvisation and unraveling of the government. This is a very rough patch for him."

The ministerial shuffle follows the failure of a political and financial reform package put to a referendum Oct. 25. After the crushing defeat of a project the president had personally championed, each of Uribe's ministers turned in a resignation letter.

Londono, whose tenure was rocky from the start, was the first to fall. His relationship with Congress had deteriorated and was exacerbated when he publicly and falsely suggested the president planned to call for early elections.

A week later, the defense minister's resignation was accepted. Ramírez had failed to establish a working rapport with the generals, who resented a civilian woman calling the shots. Her quest to increase her control over military purchasing particularly rattled the generals.

Although Mora insisted he offered his resignation a month ago, his retirement after 42 years in the armed forces came as a shock.

Under his command and the president's direction, the armed forces have been credited with making important inroads against the leftist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

Analysts agreed that the piecemeal resignations gave the impression that they were not planned by the president. Had Uribe sought a wide-ranging shake-up, he would have done it all at once, analysts said.

"Resignations hour by hour give the sense that Uribe is not on top of his game," said Phillip McLean, a Colombia expert at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. "The referendum results threw him off his game."

Just before Mora stepped down, Uribe sent a memo to all government workers: "Concentrate on working, managing, producing results; work with macro-vision and dedication to micro-detail."

Uribe faces a tough challenge not just to fill key appointments, but also to address a growing fiscal gap.

He has warned that the failure to pass the cost-cutting measures that voters rejected could bring Colombia to a fiscal collapse like the one last year in Argentina.

Experts say it was no coincidence that he chose business leaders to replace the interior and defense ministers. Insurance executive Jorge Alberto Uribe, no relation, was named defense minister, and Sabas Pretelt de la Vega, head of the national retailers' federation, became minister of interior.

"The government should have taken these actions some time ago — maintaining an unstable situation was worse," congressman Rodrigo Rivera said.

"It's evident that there's a political crisis, but this president has great legitimacy and leadership. He can overcome this."

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