Zuluaga’s Rise Puts Talks with Colombia’s Rebels under Threat
Zuluaga’s Rise Puts Talks with Colombia’s Rebels under Threat
COA’s Eric Farnsworth comments on the presidential runners’ agenda and the prospects for Colombia’s peace talks ahead of Sunday’s elections.
Only five months ago, Óscar Iván Zuluaga was virtually unknown, even in his own country. Yet on Sunday he may become Colombia’s next president, a meteoric rise that has roiled the Bogotá establishment and may put the country’s peace talks with Marxist rebels on hold.
Giant campaign billboards along the roads of Latin America’s third-biggest economy explain his dramatic rise ahead of the June 15 vote. They show Mr Zuluaga, a mild-looking figure, pointing into the distance while next to him, smiling approvingly, stands his mentor: the controversial figure of former president, Álvaro Uribe....
How that team would change Colombia is unclear as both sides’ campaigns have been marked more by scandals and mud-slinging than substantial policy debate, largely because the differences between the centrist Mr Santos and the more conservative Mr Zuluaga – peace talks apart – are small.
“Both Zuluaga and Santos believe in fiscal orthodoxy and a strong relationship with the US,” says Eric Farnsworth, a vice-president at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas in Washington. “The main difference is their personalities and how that plays out in the peace talks; Santos has one eye to his place in history . . . Zuluaga is somewhat different....”
