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SCMP Reporter

ERNESTO SAMPER HOWEVER much its millions of law-abiding citizens may regret it, Colombia is famous round the world for one thing - as the home of some of the world's biggest, toughest and richest drug cartels.

  Narco-dollars permeate the country from top to bottom, and this weekend the man at the head of the country is sinking ever deeper into the mire.

  For months, Ernesto Samper has faced a dripfeed of charges that his successful 1994 presidential campaign was financed by the Cali drug cartel.

  This week, the accusations took on the volume of a tidal wave. On Monday, Samper's former campaign manager said the President personally approved the receipt of millions of dollars in drug money for his campaign.

  Another former campaign official then alleged that Samper had held talks with a Cali cartel envoy last September during a Latin American summit in Ecuador.

  The President dismissed the charge as absurd, but three ministers and four of Colombia's ambassadors have resigned over the allegations.

  Colombia's most famous writer, Nobel prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, spoke of the danger of civil war.

   At the end of the week, Samper's personal lawyer was preparing to flee the country after death threats, and a senior army commander said he was stepping down because the President was unworthy of his support.

  Even Samper's Vice-President issued a statement calling the accusations 'serious', adding 'the people demand [to know] the truth'.

  The pressure was such that on Friday Samper cancelled a European trip to meet French President Jacques Chirac and Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez.

   And it is not just the 44-year-old President who is deep in trouble.

  The country which he was elected to lead to the threshold of the 21st Century appears to be crumbling around him too.

  Leftist guerillas, who have grown wealthy through drug trafficking, kidnapping and banditry, may ultimately be the only Colombians who benefit from the turmoil accompanying the nation's worst political crisis in decades.

  'Colombian society, and our institutions in general, are falling apart like a house of cards,' said Attorney-General Orlando Vasquez Velasquez.

  'Never before in our lifetime has Colombian society had to go through a situation like this.'   The problems erupted last summer when Santiago Medina, the jailed treasurer of Samper's 1994 election campaign, first accused him of knowingly accepting millions of dollars in contributions from the Cali drug cartel to finance his bid for the country's top job.

  Samper has said repeatedly that if any drug money entered his campaign it did so behind his back. A congressional committee controlled by his own Liberal Party has cleared him of any wrongdoing, citing a lack of evidence to implicate him. Samper, while protesting his innocence, concedes that the scandal underscores the extent to which cocaine wealth has penetrated all walks of life in Colombia. Even some of the most patriotic Colombians now deride the nation long known as one of the most stable and democratic in Latin America as a 'narco-democracy' where drug money can buy almost anything.

  Even the Attorney-General, who has likened Colombian institutions to the three major bridges that collapsed in the country this month, is the target of an ongoing drug corruption investigation. The extent of drug-related graft in the country explains, at least in part, the absence of mass protests against Samper over the past week, according to diplomats and political opposition leaders.

  'People are mired in scepticism about the political class,' said Enrique Parejo, a former justice minister and anti-drug crusader.

  'They don't believe in anybody and they think all politicians should be measured with the same stick - that they're all corrupt and have all taken drug money.'   Public apathy and disgust with politics was cited by several diplomats as part of the reason why Samper, described by one as 'incredibly thick-skinned and mercurial', may survive the crisis around him, at least for now.

  'I think he'll just tough it out,' one European diplomat said, adding that Samper could continue playing on public indifference indefinitely.

  'The scope for thinking the unthinkable in this country is unlimited.'   He dismissed rumours of a coup and talk of possible civil unrest because of the chaotic political situation. But he said a real military threat was hanging over the government, no matter who leads it, a factor that has received far less attention than it deserves amid the country's prolonged crisis.

  Citing military intelligence reports, the diplomat said Colombia's two leading leftist guerilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army, earned US$500 million (about HK$3.8 billion) through kidnappings alone in 1995, not to mention other sources of income such as drug trafficking, banditry and money laundering through shell companies or name-plate businesses in Colombia and abroad.

  The rebels - about 10,000-strong in 1994, according to government figures - are expected to double their strength by the time Samper is due to step down in 1998, the diplomat said.

   Samper may have had a terrible week; his country looks as though it is in for an even worse future.



The president snowed under by graft charges