The capstone project is where students have to pick a country and do research on the that country for the 3 years they are in highschool. This year we had to do research on the government of the country. The country I picked for my capstone is Columbia, I picked this country because, I didnt really know a lot about it, and I wanted to find information on it. Here is what Ive learned about the government of Columbia.
The type of government in Colombia is a republic form of government, which means that the political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them. In Colombia they have a executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government. In the executive branch they have a president, vice president, and cabinets. They hold elections every four years, and the popular vote wins, the person that wins serves a four year term.
The cabinet consists of a coalition of two dominant parties, the PL which is like the Liberal party here in the U.S., and PSC which is like the Conservative party in the U.S. The Judicial branch is made up of four coequal supreme judicial organs. The Supreme court of justice which is the highest court of criminal law, select judges from the nominees of the higher council of justice, after they are selected they serve eight year terms. The council of state which is the highest court of administrative law, is selected the same way as the supreme court of justice, and also serve terms of eight years.
The Higher council of justice Administers and disciplines the civilian judiciary. Members of the Disciplinary chamber resolves judiciary conflicts arising between courts. The Members are elected by three sister courts and Congress for eight-year terms. The legislative branch is a bicameral congress it consist of a senate, and a house of representatives. The senate has 102 seats, members are elected by the popular vote, and serve 4 year terms.
The House of Representatives has 166 seats, and members are selected by the popular vote, and serve 4 year terms. Colombia and the U.S. have many things in common with the government, they both have a executive, judicial, and legislative branches. The only difference between the branches is that each country has a different number of seats in the branches. Each government holds elections every four years for president, and vice president.
The U.S. government celebrated there independence on July 4, 1776, and 34 years later on July 20, 1810 Colombia celebrated there independence. The legal system in Colombia was modeled after the U.S. legal system. The Colombian government has a republic, and the executive branch dominates the government structure, and in the U.S. the government is based on the constitution. The official language of Colombia is Spanish, nearly everyone in Colombia speak it. They closely guard their language to keep it from changing, they even passed a law to protect any unnecessary change. Colombians consider their Spanish purer then any other Latin American country.
The population in the year 2002 was 41,008,227, and the population growth rate is 1.6%. The age structure of Colombia almost matches up to the age structure of the U.S., there is 31.6% 014 year olds, 63.6 1564 year olds, and 4.8% 65 and older. Over 90% of Colombians are roman catholic, other religions in Colombia are jews, and Protestants. The literacy rate in Colombia is 91.3%, which is 5.7% lower then that of the U.S. literacy rate. Colombia is made up of many different ethnic groups, the biggest one is the mestizo which makes up 58% of the population.
Mestizos are a mixture of Europeans and Indian ancestry. 20% of the population are whites, 14% are mulattos, 4% are black, and 4% are Amerindian. In the government of Colombia the president is Alvaro Uribe, he was elected August 2002. The vice president is Francisco Santos, who also was elected in August 2002.
The minister of national defense is Marta Lucia Ramirez, and the minister of culture is Maria Araujo. One of the most important roles in the Colombian government is the ambassador to the U.S., this role belongs to Luis Alberto Moreno. The Colombian flag is a very important part of the culture of Colombia. Francisco Mirando, a Venezuelan deigned the national flag in 1806. He took the red, and yellow from the Spanish flag, then divided the two colors by a stripe of blue to symbolize the ocean separating the independent country from the motherland.
The upper half of the flag is yellow which symbolizes the national riches of the country. The lower half of the flag is divided between red, and blue, the red shows the blood shed in the way for independence, which was won on July 20, 1810. The Colombian flag is similar to the flag of Ecuador, the only difference is that the Ecuador flag has a coat of arms symbol in the center of the flag.
After doing all the research on the Colombian government, Ive learned a lot of things that I never knew, and Im glad that I picked this country to do my capstone project on. Before doing this project I thought Colombia was a unstable country, but now I have a whole new outlook on it, it is actually one place that I want to visit when im older, it has a lot of natural beauty and just a nice place to go on for vacation. Doing this project was a very good experience and I cant wait to do it again next year!
