The presidential election in Colombia this past Sunday, May 25th, resulted in no official victor. As mandated by national law, a presidential candidate must win a majority vote of 50%.1 Thus, the two front runners, incumbent Manuel Santos and challenger Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, will compete in a June 15th runoff election after winning 25.6% and 29.3% of the vote, respectively.
On Sunday, incumbent Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos won re-election. Santos defeated his run-off opponent, fellow conservative Oscar Ivan Zuluaga 51% to 45%.1 His victory was a comeback in nature, after emerging from the first round 500,000 votes behind Zuluaga. Yet on June 15th, Santos won by almost one million votes.2
The last report of the Americas Barometer Insight Series, authored by Ana Maria Montoya, focuses on Colombians' perception of the conversion of the FARC into a political party.
On June 15, 2014, elections were held for the second time in Colombia in two months to determine who would serve as president for the next four years. Colombian elections, like presidential elections in many Latin American countries, take place in two rounds, if no winner can secure over 50% of the votes in the first round. In 2014, the current president, Juan Manuel Santos, of the center-right Party of the U, faced off against four challengers: Óscar Iván Zuluaga, of the Democratic Center; Clara López Obregón, of the Polo Democrático Alternativo; Marta Lucía Ram
The peace negotiations currently underway in Colombia between the Juan Manuel Santos government and the guerilla group known as theFARC are setting the conditions for the eventual electoral participation of FARC excombatants,including the opportunity for them to run for office. This Insights reportexamines the attitudes of Colombians towards the FARC’s formal participation in thecountry’s political system.
Peace talks in Havana, Cuba between the Colombian rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the Colombian government have been underway since August in an effort to end the five-decade-long war between the two groups. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos authorized the leader of FARC, Rodrigo Londoño Echeverry, also known by his war name as Timochenko, to visit Cuba twice in the last three months in order to negotiate the terms of a potential peace treaty.1
For the past two years, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, has been in negotiation with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, otherwise known as FARC.
After nearly two years of peace negotiations between FARC and the Colombian government, the FARC have done something they have never done before. In all the 50 years that FARC has been terrorizing Colombia, they have never once sequestered a government or military official, but on November 16th, 2014, a leading general in the Colombian military was captured while traversing a remote river in an indigenous region of the Colombian rainforest.
