The leftist grandson of a dictator was elected on Sunday as mayor of Bogota, which is considered Colombia's second-most powerful elected office, in regional and local voting that was largely free of violence.
Samuel Moreno, candidate for the leftist Democratic Pole Alternative party, won 44 percent of the votes compared to 28 percent for his main challenger, former mayor Enrique Penalosa, according to the election registry.
The new mayor of Colombia's capital faces a potentially fractious relationship with conservative Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who made a series of statements seen by many as pleas to voters to reject Moreno, including a nationally televised speech on election eve.
Bogota's current mayor, Luis Eduardo Garzon, belongs to Moreno's party and consecutive wins could boost the Alternative Democratic Pole's standing ahead of a 2010 presidential election. Bogota, with nearly 7 million people, is home to a sixth of Colombia's population.
Voters also elected 32 governorships, 1,098 mayorships and thousands of lesser offices across the country choosing from about 87,000 candidates.
The runup to the elections saw about 30 candidates killed, according to the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and many had feared election-day violence. The military said 170,000 soldiers and police were deployed.
But Sunday passed largely free of violence and the government declared the elections a success. The police reported one officer killed in the western province of Cauca.
"With their vote, the Colombian people said no to the killers of democracy," said General Freddy Padilla, armed forces commander.
Colombians closely followed the ups and downs of the race in Bogota, a campaign condemned by many as dirty.
Moreno, 47, who promised to construct a metro in the capital, is grandson of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. The general seized power in 1953 in what he said was an effort to stop sectarian violence. Thrown out of power, Rojas Pinilla stood for election in 1970 but lost in a vote that was widely considered fraudulent.
Born in Miami, Moreno attended Harvard before becoming a senator in Colombia. As more scandals swirled around his campaign, Moreno complained of bias in the media in favor of his opponent, who was backed by many in the wealthy north of the capital.
But Moreno shrugged off controversies -- notably a pro-Moreno article posted on a Web site with close links to Colombia's largest leftist rebel group, and his statement in a debate that he would buy 50 votes if he knew his rival had purchased 50,000.
He received further criticism when an interview from 1995 was dug up that seemed to suggest he supported armed struggle against the government in certain circumstances.
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
RSS