DRUGS, MONEY AND A PRESIDENT'S RUIN

By KARSTEN PRAGER/BOGOTA

IN THE 18 MONTHS SINCE HE BECAME President, Ernesto Samper Pizano has dodged bullet after political bullet, each carrying accusations that his 1994 election campaign received millions of dollars in contributions from the Cali cocaine cartel. He has responded that if drug funds were accepted, it was without his knowledge. But last week the President's evasions were firmly contradicted: a former close associate charged that Samper was indeed aware of the cartel connection. Though many Colombians all along have believed that the Samper campaign had a Cali taint, the latest allegation stunned the country. As calls for the President's resignation mounted, his ability to govern was put in grave doubt.

Fernando Botero Zea, who was Samper's right-hand man, 1994 campaign manager and Defense Minister, made his charges from Bogota's Cavalry School barracks, where he has been detained for more than five months. Two hours after the Botero revelation, Samper fired back in a televised address. "The truth," he declared, "is that Botero is lying to save himself." Botero may in fact have decided to talk because he sensed the President was cutting him loose.

Last August, in an apparent effort to shield Samper, Botero resigned as Defense Minister after being implicated in the soliciting of campaign funds from the Cali kingpins; two weeks later, he found himself in detention, under investigation by the Prosecutor General's office. Though Samper repeatedly declared his belief in Botero's innocence, Botero came to suspect that the President was planning to make him the scapegoat in the scandal. He reached the breaking point on Jan. 21, when Samper failed to appear for a scheduled dinner at the barracks, sending in his place Interior Minister Horacio Serpa. Botero became so angry that he threw a glass across the room. "I told Serpa," he said later, "that the situation was leading the country to chaos, that the truth had to come out." After the visit, Botero's lawyer advised the Prosecutor General's office that his client wanted to give important new testimony.

As the crisis deepened, Colombians found themselves debating a Samper resignation versus the President's own complex plan for a referendum on his rule and a reopened congressional investigation into his conduct. Samper rejects resignation as "an act of cowardice." In an interview with TIME last week, in which he repeated his denials, the President appeared astonishingly confident and almost cheerful. "What is ultimately important," he said, "is not what people think, but my conscience." As the days went by, however, his strategy for staying the course came under growing pressure. Three of his 15 ministers resigned, as did five ambassadors. A group representing 15 influential business organizations suggested that he step down pending an investigation. By the end of the week, Santiago Medina, his former campaign treasurer who last year testified that the campaign received about $6 million from cartel leaders, claimed that Samper personally ordered the use of $400,000 of those funds for his election run.

Samper's problems got no sympathy in Washington, where he has long been considered too soft on drug traders. The State Department dismissed the storm in Bogota as an "internal" issue, but Republican Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, demanded that Colombia be "decertified," or given a failing grade, for its efforts in the narco wars. If the certification ruling, due March 1, goes against Colombia, repercussions on preferential trade and credit arrangements would be severe. The U.S. government was pleased last summer when the Colombians scored a coup by jailing six of the seven top Cali barons. However, Washington officials grumbled about Samper's hesitancy in pushing for harsher antitrafficking and money-laundering legislation, and they complained volubly this month when Jose Santacruz Londono, one of the top three Cali dons, managed a suspect's escape from a maximum-security prison.

Prosecutor General Alfonso Valdivieso Sarmiento, whose relentless pursuit of the drug mob has made him the most popular man in Colombia, told TIME last week that he expected the Botero investigation to conclude within two months. That could well mean more painful news for Samper, who, a Bogota analyst predicted, "will be staggering from revelation to revelation if he doesn't step down." Valdivieso sees one potential benefit in the crisis. "If it is resolved properly," he suggests, "at a time when Colombians are willing to reject the narco society they used to tolerate, we will have a better country." That obviously depends on whether Samper stays or goes.

--With reporting by Patti Lane/Bogota

With reporting by PATTI LANE/BOGOTA