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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘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
RSS