Ex-guerrilla launches Colombia presidential bid
BOGOTA — Former guerrilla leader Rodrigo Londono was once one of Colombia’s mostwanted men. Now he is a presidential contender.
The greying, spectacled man best known by his alias Timochenko launched his bid Saturday to lead the government he once battled from the jungle with a celebratory campaign kickoff featuring giant posters, colourful confetti and even a catchy jingle.
“I promise to lead a government that propels the birth of a new Colombia,” he said. “A government that at last represents the interests of the poor.”
Breaking with the traditional campaign launch from a five-star Bogota hotel, Timochenko initiated his presidential bid from one of the city’s poorest, most crime ridden neighbourhoods in a clear nod to the underprivileged class whose votes the ex-combatants are hoping to win. Hundreds gathered in the parking lot of a community centre decorated with banners featuring a smiling Timochenko sporting a neatly trimmed beard, angular, thick-rimmed glasses, and a crisp blue shirt.
“Timo president,” a new campaign song played from loudspeakers. “For the people.”
The campaign is another historic step in transforming the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia into a political party following the signing of a 2016 peace accord ending more than a half-century of conflict. The nation’s once-largest rebel group is now known as the Common Alternative Revolutionary Force, keeping its Spanish FARC acronym, and presenting a slate of former guerrillas as candidates.
Yet even as the ex-combatants ditch rebel green fatigues for simple white T-shirts emblazoned with the party’s red rose emblem there have been fresh reminders that the road to peace is filled with hazard.
Two ex-combatants were recently shot to death while campaigning for a FARC congressional candidate in northwestern Colombia. In total, 45 former FARC members or their relatives have been reported killed, according to a recent government report. Many fear a repeat of events in the 1980s, when scores of leftist politicians affiliated with the Patriotic Union party were gunned down.
On the same day as the FARC campaign’s inauguration, at least five police officers were killed and another 41 injured when a homemade bomb exploded outside a police station in the northern city of Barranquilla. Another blast early Sunday near a police station in the same region injured seven people, police said. And two officers died in yet another bombing Saturday, well to the south in a region where a different, smaller rebel group is active.
While police said the Barranquilla attack was likely due to a local criminal gang, it underscored security challenges that remain even after the peace signing.
“From here on is going to be a huge test of whether the FARC’s gamble is correct: That they can practice politics without fear of being killed,” said Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America.