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- WORLD, Page 37World NotesCOLOMBIAPresident of Last Resort
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- After a violent election campaign left three presidential
- candidates dead, Colombians gingerly went to the polls last
- week in the lowest turnout ever. As expected, they elected
- Cesar Gaviria Trujillo of the ruling Liberal Party as their new
- leader, with a surprisingly large 47% of the vote.
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- Gaviria, 43, owes his victory in part to his willingness to
- pick up the mantle of antidrug crusaders after his party's
- leading candidate, Luis Carlos Galan, was gunned down last
- August by drug-cartel assassins. Thrust unexpectedly into the
- limelight at the urging of Galan's family, Gaviria emerged as
- the most vocal of the candidates against the narcotraficantes.
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- to use it only as a "last resort."
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- An economist by training, the President-elect, who will take
- office on Aug. 7, also insists that the U.S. do more to help
- win the drug war. He complains that unfair tariffs on
- legitimate exports like coffee and flowers hinder efforts to
- squelch the drug trade. "The U.S. has to understand we don't
- want their troops," he says. "We want to be treated fairly as
- a trading partner."
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