Colombia's Constitutional Court cleared the way on Friday for right-wing President Alvaro Uribe, popular for tough policies against Marxist rebels, to run for a second term in May's election.

The green light for Uribe, who is Washington's closest Latin American ally, came when the court voted 7-2 to approve a law meant to prevent incumbents abusing their powers to unfair electoral advantage.

Without the Electoral Guarantees Law, Uribe could have been barred from contesting the election, which early polls predict he would win by a landslide.

Uribe, who has secured a steep decline in violence and kidnapping since he took office in 2002, has a 70 percent approval rating.

The Constitutional Court last month approved a constitutional amendment allowing presidents to serve more than one four-year term, and politicians and analysts had widely assumed it would give Uribe the final electoral go-ahead.

"The Constitutional Court today declared the statute Electoral Guarantees Law constitutional," the court's president, Manuel Jose Cepeda, told a news conference.

Critics of allowing presidents to seek a second term have said they feared it would erode the checks and balances of Colombia's constitution and point to unhappy experiences in other Latin American countries such as Peru and Argentina.

Colombia's inspector general -- a senior lawyer responsible for ensuring the government acts legally -- had recommended the court bar Uribe from running in May. But analysts said unelected judges would be loathe to stand in the way of the country's most popular politician.

Uribe has boosted defence spending and ordered the military to be more aggressive against rebels fighting a 4-decade-old war for socialist revolution. The country's highways, long a happy hunting ground for kidnappers, have become much safer.

DEMOBILIZING PARAMILITARIES

Assisted by hundreds of millions of dollars a year in U.S. aid, Uribe has also stepped up spraying of crops used to make cocaine and increased extraditions of drug traffickers to the United States.

He has begun talks to demobilise illegal far-right paramilitaries, who traffic in cocaine and have killed thousands of civilians in a dirty war against the rebels, sometimes in cooperation with sectors of the military.

The economy has also improved under Uribe, as companies and ordinary Colombians feel more confident about spending in a country long rocked by bombs and killings.

Uribe will officially announce whether he is running for a second term by a November 27 deadline, said Interior Minister Sabas Pretelt.

But the president's intention is, especially after the frantic political activity by his allies to get Congress to pass the constitutional amendment to allow him to run again.

While he is extremely popular in high-income groups, many poorer Colombians, who bear the brunt of the country's violence, also back Uribe.

"I hope Uribe wins next year's election," said Ricardo Carrero, 37, who was picking up tin cans and paper scraps from a Bogota street and putting them in a home-made wheelbarrow to sell, "He is the only one who has been able to reduce the violence in this country. He is our future."

While the Constitutional Court opened the way for a second consecutive Uribe bid for office, it ruled no public officials other than the president could take part in elections.