COLOMBIA'S HARD RIGHT

Alvaro Uribe Velez--slight and bespectacled--looks more like a high-school math teacher than a hard-charging ideologue. But there's nothing wimpy about his message: from the moment he declared his candidacy for Colombia's 2002 presidential election, the former state governor promised to halt peace negotiations with the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and restore law and order. At first, his tough talk didn't garner much support. But after languishing in third place in opinion surveys much of last year, he suddenly took the pole position in January. Now Uribe commands an approval rating of 59 percent, and it seems nothing short of an assassin's bullet can stop the maverick politician from winning the May election.

In a blood-steeped country, the rise of a right-wing hard-liner is hardly surprising. But what is less clear is what Uribe's victory will mean for Colombia and its increasingly close military ties to the United States. The Bush administration, fighting to increase American military engagement in the war against the rebels, will likely welcome a more resolute president in Bogota. As will most of his countrymen. "Ordinary Colombians who have grown tired of guerrilla abuses see in Uribe a tough leader with a firm hand," says former national-security adviser Armando Borrero.

But human-rights activists, civil libertarians and other critics see something else: another threat to Colombia's besieged democracy. They claim the heir apparent has too cozy a relationship with Colombia's disreputable military, a coterie of shady associates, past and present, with allegations of links to the drug trade hanging over them, and a penchant for strongman tactics. "Many of [Uribe's] backers support him because they favor an authoritarian government," says political analyst Marco Romero of Bogota's National University. "That makes many people worry that his extreme-right-wing vision of public order may not jibe with democratic principles."

Uribe actually owes his unprecedented ascent to the guerrillas. Most Colombians had already run out of patience with the faltering peace process when the FARC unleashed a fresh offensive in January. They sabotaged electric pylons, bombed a Bogota restaurant, killing four policemen and a 5-year-old girl, and tried to blow up the main reservoir serving the capital. In February, four rebels hijacked an airliner and kidnapped a prominent senator. Uribe, 49, was already soaring in the polls when a frustrated President Andres Pastrana finally called off talks with rebels and ordered troops to retake the haven he had allowed the FARC to occupy in 1998. For millions of voters, the total collapse of peace talks vindicated Uribe's hard line--and his run for the presidency.

He had been written off by pundits when he left the ranks of the mainstream Liberal Party to mount his one-man campaign. His rivals tried to discredit him early on as the standard-bearer of the far right in a country where ultraconservative politicians have seldom occupied the presidential palace. But that criticism wound up working in Uribe's favor. Courting voters with the motto "Strong hand, big heart," the veteran politician from the city of Medellin cast himself as a foe of Colombia's political establishment who would put national security and law and order at the top of his agenda. As the son of a wealthy landowner killed by FARC forces in the 1980s, he said he never understood how Pastrana could have granted the Marxist rebels a Switzerland-size enclave without first extracting a ceasefire agreement.

The Bush administration is increasingly concerned about the meltdown in Colombia. In the final months of the Clinton era, the country became the third largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. But the initial $1.3 billion assistance package was restricted to supporting the Pastrana government's anti-drug efforts and could not legally be diverted to counterinsurgency operations. The U.S. Congress feared the money would go to help right-wing paramilitaries that massacre suspected rebel sympathizers, often with the support of elements in Colombia's military. It was always a difficult distinction to maintain in a country where both the FARC and the right-wing militias are directly involved in the narcotics trade. But post-September 11, the Bush White House has pushed to do away with the restrictions altogether.