But which one will succeed the president?

ALTHOUGH he is barred by the constitution from seeking a third term in the presidential election in May, Alvaro Uribe’s influence over Colombia will remain great. As votes were slowly tallied in an election for a new Congress on March 14th, it became clear that parties which formed part of his centre-right coalition will retain a clear majority. Who will command these legislators is less so.

The vote seemed to strengthen the claims of Juan Manuel Santos, a former defence minister who more than anyone else embodies the continuation of Mr Uribe’s “democratic security” policy. Mr Santos’s U Party (that’s U for Uribe) won 25% of the valid votes, and increased its representation in the 102-seat Senate to 28, from 20. ...

And the gloom in Toronto

TIME was when the decision over where to put a new Canadian capital-markets regulator would have been automatic. Toronto, Canada’s most populous city and the capital of Ontario, the most populous province, has long been the country’s business and financial centre. The biggest banks are there, as is the stock exchange. Legions of lawyers, accountants and bankers flock daily to the towers surrounding King and Bay streets. And yet the Canadian government is in two minds over the home for the new authority, and may end up splitting it between several cities—partly to placate provincial regulators jealous of their purviews.

This hesitation has brought grumbles from politicians in Ontario. But it is tacit recognition that economic and political power in Canada are slowly shifting westward, and in particular to Calgary, the main business centre in Alberta, a province with a large oil and gas industry. ...

Lacking his predecessor’s popular touch, Sebastian Pinera (below) and his team of business technocrats will face pressure from Chileans for quick results

HE HAS always been hyperkinetic. But taking office as Chile’s president just 12 days after a devastating earthquake has thrown Sebastian Pinera into a frenzy of activity. No sooner had he been sworn in on March 11th as the country’s first elected right-of-centre leader in half a century than he was off on a helicopter tour of the damage from a big aftershock, cancelling lunch with seven visiting Latin American presidents. Having set up an emergency committee under his interior minister to handle the disaster, Mr Pinera is doing much of the work himself, holding cabinet meetings late into the night and making whistle-stop visits to the worst-affected areas in south-central Chile.

He has a big task ahead of him. The ground is still shaking. Parts of the coast have been raised by two metres. The death toll (at around 500) is lower than at first feared. An official in the outgoing government reckons that 150,000 families were made homeless (down from an initial guess of 500,000). Even so, the new team guesses that the earthquake has caused damage to infrastructure, businesses and homes of some $30 billion (a sum equal to around a fifth of GDP), though it will be weeks before an accurate tally is made. ...

Attempts to stop drugs money corrupting public life in Guatemala are making some progress. In Jamaica (see article) the worries are growing

FOR the second time in less than a year, Guatemala’s national police chief has become one of its most prominent criminal defendants. Last August Porfirio Perez Paniagua was arrested for stealing drugs and cash. He was replaced by Baltazar Gomez (pictured above, left), a respected officer who had passed a polygraph test. Yet on March 2nd Mr Gomez was himself apprehended, along with Nelly Bonilla, the country’s anti-narcotics tsar. They were charged with involvement in drugs trafficking and with thwarting the investigation of a firefight last April, when five corrupt cops attempting to seize cocaine for resale were killed by the drugs’ owners. This parade of police chiefs in the dock shows both how much progress has been made in the fight for justice in Latin America’s most lawless country, and how much remains to be done.

Just a few years ago, such high-level arrests would have been unthinkable. Guatemala’s 36-year civil war was the Americas’ worst armed conflict of the 20th century: it killed 200,000 indigenous people, and was declared a genocide by a commission sponsored by the United Nations. Yet unlike most of its regional peers, the country was unable to establish a clear break with the past after a peace treaty was signed in 1996. A generous amnesty law meant that no members of the army were jailed for their participation until last year. One of the authors of a truth-commission report, Juan Jose Gerardi, was bludgeoned to death two days after its publication. Efrain Rios Montt, who was president of the military regime when the worst atrocities took place, remained a congressman until his unsuccessful bid to return to the presidency via the ballot-box in 2003. ...

Bereft of controversy, lawmakers chew seal meat and sing a sexist anthem

WHEN Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, prorogued Parliament in December for more than two months, to avoid some bothersome debates, he said this was so his minority Conservative government could “recalibrate” its policies. Now that the recession was over, he said, the emphasis needed to shift towards budgetary control. However, as the new session began on March 3rd, the throne speech outlining the legislative programme was notable for its dearth of new ideas. Likewise the rather dull budget speech the next day.

The Liberals, the main opposition, were so stumped for something to quibble with in the budget that they decided not to vote it down, which at least spares Canadians a third general election in just over four years. So, with little of substance to joust over, lawmakers have been turning their attention to some less urgent matters. In response to a proposal by a Liberal senator, the parliamentary canteen served seal meat for the first time on March 10th. The idea is to show solidarity with hunters, on Canada’s Atlantic and Arctic coasts, who are enraged at the European Union’s recent ban on imports of seal products. Last year Canada’s governor-general, Michaelle Jean, caused a stir by eating raw seal meat on a visit to the Arctic. The lawmakers enjoyed theirs cooked, in a port sauce. ...