ASSOCIATED PRESS

Wednesday, 17 June 1998


                Colombia Picks New President Sunday
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        By Vivian Sequera


BOGOTA -- He comes from a respected family, he's not afraid to show his
emotions and he is widely considered to be honest.

But what would seem like virtues could prove the undoing of Andres
Pastrana, the 44-year-old Conservative Party challenger in Sunday's
two-man runoff for Colombia's presidency.

Colombians still recall June 19, 1994, when Pastrana, former mayor of
Bogota, wept on television while admitting defeat in his first run at the
country's highest office.

Three days later, Pastrana called a news conference and dropped a
political bombshell that would badly wound the government of the man who
won, Ernesto Samper.

That disclosure, in the eyes of many Colombians, only painted Pastrana a
sore loser.

Pastrana played a taped phone conversation in which a leading Cali cartel
drug trafficker discussed what turned out to be a $6 million donation to
Samper's campaign, unleashing a political furor and an investigation that
lasted years.

After that, Pastrana largely disappeared from public life until launching
his campaign this year.

Congress cleared Samper of wrongdoing in 1996, but the ``narco-cassettes''
scandal consumed his administration and strained ties with the United
States, which revoked Samper's visa. More than a dozen Congress members, 
a
defense minister and an attorney general were convicted.

Pastrana's opponent in Sunday's election, Liberal Party candidate Horacio
Serpa, was interior minister under Samper, whom he has refused to
criticize despite broad popular disenchantment with the outgoing
president.

Pastrana harps on the connection, calling Serpa the candidate of
``business as usual.''

In Colombia's hierarchy of morals, however, loyalty may have the edge over
honesty.

``What for Serpa scores as a great virtue is the same primitive morality
that makes someone rub people the wrong way for being a tattletale,'' said
political analyst Hernando Gomez Buendia.

Pastrana hopes a longing for change will outweigh any reservations about
his character.

``We'll end up voting for the lesser of two evils,'' said another analyst,
Juan Manuel Charry, predicting Pastrana will win.

Pastrana must overcome a ruling party political machine that is getting
out the votes despite the baggage of incumbency. Trailing in pre-election
polls, Serpa came back to win more votes than Pastrana in the May 31 first
round of voting.

Both candidates are courting the 2.8 million Colombians, nearly a third
of the voters, who chose an independent candidate in round one.

The well-mannered son of the late former President Misael Pastrana and
scion of a well-to-do family, Pastrana has battled charges that he is the
candidate of privilege and out of touch with poor Colombians.

``Pretty boy, from a gold cradle, that's his image ... and his
disadvantage,'' Gomez said of the photogenic, blue-eyed Pastrana, who as a
long-haired teen-ager walked the streets of Bogota collecting money for
the poor.

Serpa, a 55-year-old career public official, stresses his working-class
roots and questions Pastrana's credentials to lead a country beset by
entrenched drug traffickers, a 34-year civil war with leftist guerrillas,
growing paramilitary violence and spiraling unemployment.

Pastrana is backed by business leaders and many prominent Colombians,
including Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

But many analysts agree that Pastrana, despite his good intentions and
honest profile, is not up to the job.

``He's a light person, in all that implies, for a country that doesn't
necessarily have light problems,'' Gomez said.