SAN JOSE DEL GUAVIARE, Colombia (Reuters) -- When the parish priest visited him in October, local politician Giovanny Gomez thought it was to talk about land reform proposals or the town's youth radio station.

But Gomez, a left-leaning member of the provincial assembly in Guaviare in southern Colombia, had denounced local corruption at a town meeting two days before, and the priest was there with a message from right-wing paramilitary power brokers. "He was agitated and worried," Gomez said. "He told me not to ask who or how or when because he did not want to get into trouble, but he said information had gotten to him that I was going to be assassinated."

With March legislative elections then five months away, Gomez was starting to campaign on behalf of local congressman Pedro Arenas, a fellow member of a party called the Communal and Community Movement.

Gomez took his family to Colombia's capital Bogota the next month after he came home one night to find his house ransacked. His wife and two children are still in the capital. "All this is intended to weaken our political efforts," the 30-year-old Gomez said. "And it works."

Accusations by opposition politicians that President Alvaro Uribe and his supporters in Congress are backed by the paramilitaries grew to such a pitch earlier this month that two pro-government parties banned five of their own representatives from standing for reelection in March.

Uribe, a staunch U.S. ally, is expected to win reelection in May despite criticism that he has been overly generous with the paramilitaries in peace talks.

The militias, organized in the 1980s by drug smugglers and cattle ranchers to fight Marxist rebels, are disbanding in return for reduced jail sentences for crimes such as a massacre and kidnapping. The government says fewer than 4,000 paramilitaries remain armed, down from 20,000.

But human rights groups say militia criminal networks remain intact and paramilitary-friendly candidates, who benefit from the intimidation of politicians like Gomez and Arenas, will likely gain ground in the March vote. -----A veneer of legitimacy?

"One of the results of the election will be paramilitaries involved in the cocaine trade will gain a veneer of legitimacy while continuing their criminal activities," said Mauricio Romero, political analyst at Bogota's Rosario University. They will use their political clout to fight any attempt to extradite them to the United States on drug smuggling charges, he added.

Uribe has stepped up extraditions of drug suspects but paramilitary leaders expect to avoid being sent north if they keep their side of the peace deal.

Colombia's lucrative cocaine trade helps fuel the country's decades-old guerrilla war, in which thousands are killed and tens of thousands are forced from their homes every year.

Vicente Castano, a top paramilitary chief, said last year that 35 percent of Congress was friendly to the group, a percentage he expected to grow after the March vote. The government called Castano's statement exaggerated.

The United States has given Colombia about $4 billion in aid since 2000. But that did not stop Uribe from responding strongly after U.S. Ambassador William Wood expressed concern last month about paramilitary political influence.

U.S. aid cannot be used as leverage to pressure Colombia, said a statement posted on the presidential Web site. Any paramilitaries found trying to illegally influence elections will lose their benefits under the peace deal and face full prison terms, the statement said.

But political violence continues. Earlier this month for example a mayoral candidate in the town of Yumbo, Valle Del Cauca province, was killed by paramilitary gunmen, according to United Nations investigators. -----A campaign hobbled by threats

Congressman Arenas of San Jose del Guaviare, the capital of the surrounding province of Guaviare, is keeping up his reelection effort despite having received death threats. He walks around town nervously shaking hands under the eye of bodyguards provided by the government.

He avoids going out after dark, which he says hobbles his campaign by keeping him from some community events here in the provincial capital, which has the feel of a frontier town. The streets are heavily patrolled by soldiers, motorbikes are the main form of transportation and social life revolves around scruffy open-air restaurants and pool halls.

Sectors of the army have worked with the paramilitaries in the past to combat the rebels, although the government says soldiers caught doing so will be jailed.

The province of Guaviare is a focal point of the Patriot Plan, Uribe's effort at wresting control of the countryside from guerrillas also linked to the drug trade.

"If politicians who denounce the excesses of the paramilitaries are being pressured to retire here, in the heart of the Patriot Plan, what must be happening in other parts of the country?" Arenas asked.