It’s final. A court in Colombia has ruled that President Alvaro Uribe can run for office again. A constitutional change is now in effect to allow a president to run for a second term. We’ve been waiting for this news for a long time and it’s reason to celebrate. Uribe is the most popular leader, probably in the world, with a phenomenal 80% approval rating. He’s got it because he’s a revolutionary leader in every sense of the word.

No region on earth lacks leadership so sorely as Latin America. President Uribe is a major exception, and his achievements, bringing confidence and prosperity to Colombia since 2002, are a signal that Colombia is in for four more good years, enough to consolidate his democratic revolution. He is a great leader.

I can’t emphasize enough how he’s changed this country. The hard numbers like GDP and inflation are all there but I’ve cited those before. It’s the softest signals from the actions in the streets that say something. Here’s one:

Before Uribe’s leadership came along, Colombia was hell on earth. As the scent of ruins of 9/11 engulfed Manhattan I recall watching a movie about Medellin, Colombia, called ‘Our Lady of the Assassins.’ It was a memorable movie because it was the first thing that gave me a spark of perspective (I didn’t have any, it was like long black night) in the wake of the WTC attack and thus made me feel better and more hopeful even as lower Manhattan lie in ruins. In my mind, terror-wounded New York at least was not wounded like that. The film depicted a totally bitter and corrupt society. Doctors would yell at people for bringing in patients who had died of gunshot wounds to the hospital and bodies would be dumped at ‘no body dumping’ sites – as if that in itself were a normal kind of sign at a ravine. People would be casually shot on trains over little arguments, teen boys with no prospects would sell their bodies to aging perverts, motorcycle rubouts would be daily affairs, television sets would be flung out of highrises, drugs would be sold in churches, and even toddlers were corrupt.

Today, that’s changed. As our friend Harry Hutton has noted, after a recent narcoterrorist bomb attack, Colombians got together, waded through blood and broken glass and served refreshments to rescuers cleaning up in the wake of the attack and defiantly went to work at blown-out shops, warning the terrorists, Thatcher-style, that it was business as usual for them.

That is a revolution of the hardest kind, a revolution of the human heart. Alvaro Uribe has literally changed Colombians as people, and considerably for the better. These people are going to triumph.

Despite the fact that he has one of the worst terror wars in the world on his hands, Uribe has focused hard not just on stomping out narcoterrorist thugs but on making Colombia a glorious place with a real economy and a clean government. How fast it happened! Colombia has a growing economy with the most incandescent stock market in Latin America, a real sign of investor confidence. Jobs are being created, exports are growing, a free trade pact with the U.S. is close to completion, and debt is being wiped out. Its currency is strengthening, its people are saving, and for the first time I can remember, most Colombians are optimistic about their country and future. How does one build that kind of faith unless there is something real?

Now, Uribe can run for president again. Providence has just smiled on Colombia after 40 years of horror. This is truly great news.

UPDATE: Matthew Shugart at Fruits and Votes has useful additional information here.

UPDATE: Reuters has a very good analysis on the ‘curse of second terms’ in Latin America with the various pros and cons at work.