Politics
Cali is governed by a mayor who is elected for a four-year term. Under the mayor, there are several administrative departments and secretaries. Mayor's elections started in 1986, followed by Governors' in 1992. Before these dates, all Colombian regional executive-branch leaders were appointed by the President himself. The first elected mayor was Carlos Holmes Trujillo of the Liberal Party. Unlike other Colombian cities, Cali has not properly adapted to the quite new Mayor's election system. The city has had some unsuccessful stories with some of its elected mayors, two of them being removed of the office. Some argue this is caused by Aguablanca's huge mass population often driven to vote based in small short-termed gifts from populists candidates fully aware of this District needs. There were recorded cases of candidates giving bricks, cement and other stuff to the District's leaders in exchange of shifting votes to their campaigns.
| Mayor | Started | Ended |
|---|---|---|
| Carlos Holmes Trujillo García | January 1988 | January 1990 |
| Germán Villegas Villegas | January 1990 | January 1992 |
| Rodrigo Guerrero Velasco | January 1992 | December 1994 |
| Mauricio Guzmán Cuevas | January 1995 | August 1997 |
| Julio César Martínez Payán | August 1997 | December 1997 |
| Ricardo H. Cobo Lloreda | January 1998 | December 2000 |
| John Maro Rodríguez Flórez | January 2001 | December 2003 |
| Apolinar Salcedo Caicedo | January 2004 | May 2007 |
| Sabas Ramiro Tafur Reyes | May 2007 | December 2007 |
| Jorge Ivan Ospina | January 2008 | December 2011 |
The City Council is composed by 21 members, elected by citywide circumscription for four year terms. There is no relation between the number of City Counselors and the number of 'comunas' of the city, which is a merely administrative division created to facilitate city's management.
Cali has some decentralized agencies; the most important being:
- EMCALI: Energy, telecommunications, aqueduct and sewage systems services.
- Emsirva: Public waste management company for the city of Cali.
- Metrocali
- Calisalud
- Corfecali
- EMRU
Read more about this topic: Cali
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.”
—Ben C. Bradlee (b. 1921)
“The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics and trade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.”
—Philippe Sollers (b. 1936)