One thing both friends and enemies of outgoing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe agree on is that it won't be easy for the fiery conservative to leave quietly after eight years of very hands-on rule. The most popular leader in Colombian history steps down Saturday with a 75 percent approval rating after having battered leftist guerrillas and sparked investment in a country once known mainly for coffee, cocaine and kidnapping. Analysts agree that cattle rancher Uribe might try to pressure incoming president Juan Manuel Santos, his former defense minister, into lock-step adherence to his policies. But Santos, a market-friendly technocrat from an elite Bogota family, has marked his distance by naming several key ministers who have had public disputes with the outgoing leader. Santos will seek to forge his own identity while respecting the fact that he won office on Uribe's coattails. It will not be an easy balance to strike. “Having thoroughly dominated Colombian politics for eight years, Uribe will not go quietly into the wilderness,” said Michael Shifter of Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue. “Santos will have to chart his own course but at the same time be respectful of an electorate that is devoted and eternally grateful to Uribe,” Shifter said. Last month the outgoing leader went public with accusations that Venezuela was sheltering Colombian guerrillas, prompting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to cut bilateral diplomatic relations just as Santos was calling for dialogue with the neighboring country. “Clearly President Uribe has been having trouble stepping out of the limelight,” said Mark Schneider, senior vice president of the International Crisis Group. Uribe has been named vice chairman of a United Nations panel investigating Israel's May 31 attack on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla. He has also told friends that he will devote time to strengthening his political party as speculation swirls that he may run for mayor of Bogota. Known for micromanaging everything from road projects to bombing raids against the cocaine-funded Revolutionary ArmedForces of Colombia, or FARC, Uribe is leaving Colombia much safer than it was when he first took office in 2002. But success on the battlefield came at a price. The army, pressured to show results, was rocked by a scandal over what the United Nations called the widespread and systematic practice of soldiers murdering innocent peasants to pass their bodies off as rebels killed in action. Administration officials also stand accused of wiretapping judges, journalists and opposition politicians. His often confrontational style led Uribe into feuds with critics and independent institutions such as the Supreme Court, which investigated lawmaker allies accused of collaborating with paramilitary death squads. Uribe has based his career on defeating the FARC rebels who killed his father in a kidnapping attempt in the 1980s. He eclipsed his political rivals by forming an emotional bond with fellow victims, both rich and poor, of FARC violence. The only reason he did not run for and win a third term is that the courts stopped a constitutional reform aimed at allowing another re-election. But as popular as Uribe remains, he'll have a hard time setting the agenda from the sidelines. Santos has already said he will govern in his own way, not Uribe's. “Uribe will no doubt stay on top of what Santos does and does not do, and he'll speak publicly about what he does not like about security policy, negotiations with Chavez or overtures to the guerrillas,” said Mauricio Romero, professor of political science at Bogota's Javeriana University. “This will cause a rumpus in the press and in Congress, but it will not go any further than that,” he added. Santos lacks Uribe's common touch with voters but he has strong clout in Congress. He easily won June's election against the eccentric Antanas Mockus, a former Bogota mayor. Analysts warn of a possible conflict down the road between the urbane Santos and Uribe, who hails from a tight-knit farming community in Colombia's northern mountains. “Uribe will find it difficult to keep his mouth shut,” said political analyst Ricardo Avila. “If he decides to criticize Santos it would be more of an annoyance than a real obstacle.” “Tensions between the two are bound to surface but at the end of the day incoming presidents always have the upper hand, even if the outgoing president is Alvaro Uribe.”
