Colombian President Alvaro Uribe appeared to have suffered a political setback early yesterday, when returns from his referendum on broadening the fight against corruption showed the undertaking had failed to excite voters.
With more than 97 percent of the vote counted, each of 15 proposed reforms was passing with yes votes of between 80 percent and 93 percent.
But it was unclear whether turnout was large enough to meet the threshold of 25 percent of the electorate needed to make the referendum valid.
PHOTO: REUTERS
So far, turnout on all the questions was 24.75 percent or less.
Vote counting that was interrupted for the night was expected to resume early yesterday.
The referendum was expected to reduce the size of Congress from 268 to 218 seats, cap government spending and salaries for two years, and free up the cash he says he needs to beat drugs and guerrillas.
The finance ministry estimated that if it is passed, the measure could save the government US$10 billion through 2010.
But the proposals, formulated in convoluted bureaucratic language, took four full pages to describe, and they apparently failed to attract many citizens to polling stations.
Yesterday, voters were to elect mayors, municipal councils, governors and delegates to local assemblies for a three-year mandate.
Some 300,000 troops and police have been deployed to provide security for the weekend voting. Uribe has lobbied hard in recent days for the referendum in radio and television appearances.
Meanwhile, authorities blamed the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, for attacks that resulted in the deaths of six police officers and an army officer at Jambalo, 600km southwest of Bogota. Eight others were wounded.
National police director General Teodoro Campo said four were killed in the initial attack, and two officers brought in as reinforcements died in an ambush.
A separate grenade attack killed an army sergeant at a military barracks in the central province of Tolima, 100km west of Bogota, officials said.
Later, six people were killed and 10 wounded when a bomb exploded at a dairy headquarters in northern Colombia.
The explosion at the Colanta dairy cooperative at Yarumal, some 550km north of Bogota, was the second at the cooperative since Sept. 6, when a dynamite blast injured three people.
Caracol radio reported the blast could have been linked to an attempt at extortion rather than the referendum.
FARC rebels also kidnapped 12 poll monitors in Trujillo, 500km southwest of Bogota, and set fire to voting booths, authorities said.
Shortly after voting started, a bomb went off near a polling station in Colombia's second largest city, Medellin, injuring one person. A member of the leftist party Polo Democratico was kidnapped under circumstances that were unclear.
Ahead of the vote, Uribe said his aim was to defeat the "terrorists ... any way we can."
Uribe was elected promising a hard line against rebel groups. He said a successful referendum would allow him to defeat FARC and National Liberation Army leftists.
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