Colombia:Political figures with links to illegal paramilitary groups suffered setbacks in Sunday's regional elections in Colombia, as their discredited parties lost important gubernatorial and mayoral races.
Five parties, including one led by president Álvaro Uribe's cousin, former senator Mario Uribe, had been vying for eight governorships and thousands of other posts, even though their leaders are in jail or under investigation for allegedly collaborating with paramilitary death squads.
On Sunday, those five parties won control of more than 20 per cent of Colombia's towns, leading electoral monitors to voice concern over the parties' continuing hold on power at local level.
But electoral returns also showed that the parties had taken control of only two of 32 governorships, in Antioquia and Amazonas, and had failed to win mayoral posts in any major city.
Since the "para-politics" scandal erupted last year, connecting lawmakers with paramilitary groups, prosecutors have accused scores of congressmen of helping the groups to embezzle money from government institutions, traffic cocaine and orchestrate murders.
"In general, I'm satisfied by the outcome," said political analyst Claudia Lopez, who revealed how paramilitary groups and politicians had collaborated to steal elections in the past. "In the big centres of power, like the governorships and the big city halls, they suffered setbacks."
Although the run-up to the election was marred by rebel killings of almost two dozen candidates, the voting was largely free of violence. In Bogotá, voters elected Samuel Moreno, a former senator from the left-wing Democratic Pole party, as mayor - the country's second-most important post.
The win enhances the prospects for the opposition Democratic Pole ahead of the 2010 presidential election. Smaller left-leaning movements also won the mayoral posts in Colombia's second- and third-most important cities, Medellin and Cali.
A coalition of parties that support the president still scored significant victories, winning at least 15 governorships and mayoral seats in 13 state capitals, according to El Tiemponewspaper.
In addition to the two governorships won by tarnished parties, politicians from more established parties won the governorships in three coastal states with the help of party bosses who are under investigation for allegedly conspiring with paramilitary groups, electoral monitors said.
"Without a doubt, they're weaker than they were in the previous elections, but they're far from disappearing," Elisabeth Ungar, a political scholar at the University of the Andes, said in reference to paramilitary groups.
"These are serious indications that illegal groups continue to influence on the coast," Rafael Garcia, a former intelligence official jailed for collaborating with paramilitary groups, said in a phone interview from jail.