The Re-election Risk; Uribe aims to alter Colombia's Constitution so he can run for a second term. But if history is a guide, that may be a bad idea.(Albaro Uribe)

Byline: Joseph Contreras, With Steven Ambrus in Bogota and Mike Kepp in Rio de Janeiro

Alvaro Uribe is on a roll. When he was sworn in as Colombia's 43rd president in August 2002, Uribe inherited an economy in full recession and stalled peace talks with the country's largest guerrilla army. By nearly all accounts Uribe has turned the country around: Colombia's notoriously high kidnapping and murder rates are dropping, an aggressive U.S.-backed drug-eradication program has significantly lowered annual coca-leaf production and the economy is set to grow by a healthy 4 percent this year. A poll published earlier this month gave Uribe a 71 percent approval rating, but he has only two years left in his four-year term and the Constitution prohibits the president, a right-winger, from seeking re-election. Uribe and his supporters in the National Congress are pushing a constitutional amendment to change that. "In our country we have short presidential terms, and that means we think only in the short term," says Sen. Claudia Blum. "If a president is doing a good job and fulfilling his campaign promises, the people should have the right to decide whether he should continue."

Millions of Colombians are inclined to agree, and Uribe may get his wish by the year end. The proposed amendment that would allow the 51-year-old president to run again in 2006 cleared a key legislative hurdle last week and is expected to pass in both chambers of Congress later this year. But if the recent experience of some Latin American countries is any guide, Colombian legislators may want to think twice about changing the Constitution to accommodate Uribe's ambitions. Three South American countries have done just that at the behest of a sitting president over the past 10 years, and the results have ranged from the merely bad to the downright disastrous. Argentina and Peru became veritable cesspools of corruption after Carlos Menem and Alberto Fujimori got the green light to seek and win second presidential terms in the mid-1990s. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has steered an ever-more authoritarian course as president since his re-election in 2000. "[Re-election] is a bad idea in general in these countries," says Mexican political analyst Luis Rubio. "In countries where institutions are weak and the rule of law is tenuous, someone who gets re-elected winds up having too much power."

Latin America's traditional aversion to re-election is unique. A British prime minister can stand for re-election as many times as his fellow citizens see fit. Sixteen of the 43 U.S. presidents have won election to a second term in office. From Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe to Jose Eduardo dos Santos in Angola to Daniel arap Moi in Kenya, Africans have chosen many leaders who fought against colonial rule in the 1960s and 1970s only to wind up as perennial fixtures on the presidential throne. But until fairly recently, nearly every Spanish-speaking country in the Americas had a constitutional ban on the re-election of an incumbent. That distinctive feature is rooted in the region's historical experience. Re-election got a bad name from dictators like Porfirio Diaz, a highly decorated general who ruled Mexico with an --iron fist for more than 30 years and made sure his periodic re-election to a fresh term as president went off without a hitch. The Mexican revolution of 1910-17 that toppled Diaz was sparked by a demand to abolish re-election, and to this day government documents in Mexico still bear the revolutionary slogan, "Effective Suffrage, No Re-election."

Colombians agree with that logic. Their country's ban on re-election also dates back to the early years of the 20th century, when Gen. Rafael Reyes was elected president and proceeded to close down the National Congress and rule by decree until he was driven from office in 1909. Under the country's current Constitution, a president can never run for the office again ...