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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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