The father of Miguel Uribe, a Colombian presidential candidate fatally shot at a political rally earlier this year, on Tuesday launched a presidential campaign in what he called an effort keep his son’s legacy alive and build a safer and more prosperous Colombia.
Miguel Uribe Londono, 72, announced his candidacy with a speech outside the congressional building in the capital, Bogota, where his son became a well-known senator, and spoke behind a podium fitted with the campaign logo used by his deceased son.
“Together we can build a secure Colombia where people will not fear going out into the streets, and where business owners will not have to make extortion payments” to gangs, Uribe Londono said. “A democratic Colombia, where the government does not foment divisions between the rich and the poor, whites or blacks, or those who are on the left or on the right.”
Photo: Reuters
Uribe Londono was a member of the Bogota City Council in the late 1980s and a senator for the Colombian Conservative Party in the early 1990s. He had no plans to run for the presidency before his son’s death, and was not widely known by the public.
He gained new prominence during his son’s nationally televised funeral, when he delivered a speech decrying what he called the country’s descent into “madness” under the administration of left-wing Colombian President Gustavo Petro and urged Colombians to vote in next year’s elections.
Uribe Londono is one of five candidates that are running for the Democratic Center, the conservative party that Miguel Uribe belonged to.
The party has said that later this year, it would use opinion polls to decide on its final candidate.
Sergio Guzman, a political analyst in Bogota, said that Uribe Londono’s announcement to enter the presidential race “reinvigorates” the Democratic Center, which has struggled to find a popular candidate while its leader, former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, fights corruption allegations in Colombian courts.
The former president has no relation to Uribe Londono.
Guzman said that Uribe Londono, whose wife was murdered in the 1990s, “symbolizes the pain of many victims, especially those who are conservatives.”
Uribe Londono’s entry into the presidential race comes as Colombia faces a new wave of violence, caused largely by rebel groups and drug gangs that are trying to take over territory abandoned by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the guerrilla army that made peace with the government in 2016.
Last week, seven people were killed as a FARC hold-out group set off a car bomb outside a military base in Colombia’s third-largest city. While in the province of Antioquia, rebels took down a helicopter that was conducting anti-narcotics operations, killing 13 police officers.
“I am not the only father who has lost that which he loved the most, but I would like to be the voice of the latest father, who has had to accept the cruel destiny that they want to impose on us with violence and terror,” Uribe Londono said.
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
BIGGER ROLE: Beijing has said it maintains an impartial stance on the war in Ukraine, but by training Russian troops, China is far more involved than previously known China’s armed forces secretly trained about 200 Russian military personnel in China late last year, and some have since returned to fight in Ukraine, according to three European intelligence agencies and documents seen by Reuters. While China and Russia have held a number of joint military exercises since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Beijing has repeatedly said that it is neutral in the conflict and presents itself as a peace mediator. The covert training sessions, which predominantly focused on the use of drones, were outlined in a dual-language Russian-Chinese agreement signed by senior Russian and Chinese officers in Beijing on
HOTTER: While Indians are accustomed to summer heat, climate change has caused northwestern India to warm faster than other parts of the country, an academic said Roads and markets have emptied during afternoons and some farmers have switched to nighttime work to avoid scorching temperatures as a heat wave grips large parts of India. The India Meteorological Department forecast maximum temperatures for yesterday of about 45°C in the capital, New Delhi, where authorities have opened temporary “cooling zones” to help people cope. The weather department warned that conditions would likely persist across several northern regions in the coming days, with temperatures staying well above seasonal averages. Authorities urged people to stay indoors during the hottest hours and take precautions against heat-related illnesses. India declares a heat wave whenever maximum temperatures
RSS