Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is fueling debate over whether he will run for re-election with hints about his future and a growing list of possible successors he deems fit to uphold his security policies.
Uribe supporters and adversaries alike are trying to decipher whether he will step aside for 2010 or seek to change the Constitution to allow him another term in a country that many say he has saved from decades of conflict.
Colombian Ambassador to the UK Noemi Sanin is the latest to be named by Uribe as a possible standard bearer for his “Democratic Security” campaign and market-friendly proposals, should he decide against running.
A year and a half from the election, pundits are speculating over who might replace Uribe while the opposition squabbles over how best to challenge the man whose popularity rating constantly hovers around 80 percent.
“It is not ideal for a president to try and stay in power, but we cannot abandon these policies,” Uribe said in his latest remarks on re-election this week.
“We have to re-elect policies, not people,” he said.
But the conservative leader, who was re-elected in 2006, said a president could not “turn his back” on the people.
Sanin, a former presidential candidate herself, is one of the “competent” supporters of his policies who should be considered, Uribe said he has told members of his alliance.
The president also has given a nod to Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, Senator Marta Lucia Ramirez, who is a former defense minister, Cambio Radical party member German Vargas Lleras and former justice minister Carlos Holguin, among others.
In other developments, Venezuelan authorities on Tuesday deported a former Colombian senator who is wanted on charges of conspiring with right-wing paramilitaries to kidnap a reputed political rival.
Venezuelan police escorted Alvaro Araujo Noguera onto a plane destined for Colombia.
The 75-year-old one-time agriculture minister and state governor was on the run for a year-and-a-half before being captured last Thursday.
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