Australian writer Matthew Thompson – whose book My Colombian Death is a cracking read on the troubles in that country – today examines in the Sydney Morning Herald the political realities of the US-backed “democracy”:
Perhaps President Uribe is the man to keep leading Colombia away from the failed-state status it flirted with in the 1980s and 1990s, but whether his power rests on the will of the people or the terror and cash of killers and traffickers is under a cloud until the truth about “para-politics” comes out.