As some 23,000 paramilitary fighters have disarmed over the last two years, their top commanders have declared their intentions to play a role in politics.
But signs are emerging that the role is a dark one, as commanders use bribery and intimidation to control local lawmakers and even blocs of representatives in the Congress while they reshape their militias into criminal networks that traffic in cocaine, extort businesses and loot local governments.
Warnings of these activities have come from sources as varied as Colombian politicians, the UN, Western diplomats and human rights groups. Colombia's Supreme Court has begun investigating ties between paramilitaries and Congress, and some parties have begun expelling representatives with links to the groups.
The demobilization of the far-right anti-guerrilla paramilitaries is part of a deal the government hoped would bring peace to areas long tormented by war and drug trafficking. But there is little oversight of the process, and no mechanism to guarantee that the militias are completely dismantled.
"Usually the goal of a peace process is to get armed combatants to lay down arms and enter politics," said Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin America program at the Wood-row Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. "It's another thing to do it through threats and extortion and bribery and the other ways that they've used to influence politics."
The power of the paramilitaries and the methodical tactics they used to take political control were evident in 2002, in the last congressional elections. The victors won in abnormal landslides of up to 95 percent of the vote. Mayors and councilmen were also swept in, particularly in this state, Magdalena, where candidates for local offices ran unopposed in 14 of 30 towns.
Dieb Maloof, 41, who was re-elected to his Senate seat with 84 percent of the vote in the cattle town, denied any manipulation.
But the Western diplomats and Colombian lawmakers, warning that the paramilitaries are gearing up to strengthen their stranglehold, say that Maloof, a handful of other members of Congress and some mayors met secretly in December with Rodrigo Tovar, a paramilitary warlord, to lay the groundwork for an electoral sweep on March 12.
"In those meetings, they discussed what they were going to do, who was going to be a candidate, what strategies they would use, even whom they would threaten," said Cesar Gaviria, an ex-president who heads the opposition Liberal Party.
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