The Return of uribe (Who Never Really Left)

Ex-Pres. Alvaro Uribe -
a once and future king?

With his creation of a new political coalition, called 'The Pure Democratic Center,' and a social movement called the 'Front Against Terrorism,' as well as the grooming of several possible Uribista presidential candidates, arch-conservative ex-Pres. Alvaro Uribe appears to be positioning himself for another grab at power.

Ironically, current Pres. Juan Manuel Santos, who was Uribe's defense minister, was Uribe's hand-picked succesor. But Uribe has made increasingly obvious via his Twitter account his distaste for Santos' policies, which Uribe believes are enabling the country's Marxist guerrillas to strengthen themselves.

Pres. Juan Manuel Santos

But Santos appears to be planning to run for a second term, and his popularity - 69% percent in a recent poll - means he'll be tough to beat. That is, of course, if the Constitutional Court allows Santos to run to succeed himself, as Uribe did. The court may decide that Uribe's two terms pushed Colombia's democracy too close to the breaking point to risk repeating the experiment. At the same time, it's also unclear whether the Constitution would permit Uribe himself to run for a third, non-consecutive presidential term.

Uribe's formal reentry into politics leaves his former allies, who supported Santos at Uribe's urging, with a tough choice between remaining loyal to Santos or returning to Uribe's fold.

'The return of the living dead,' says this El Tiempo cartoon about Uribe's return. Except that he's been around all the time.

As far as I'm concerned, Uribe had his day and contributed a lot in pulling Colombia back from bhe verge of being a failed state. But his years were marred by huge scandals, including wiretapping and the false positives killings. Santos has achieved major successes against the guerrillas, and hopeful the recent attacks are more of a blip than a trend. In any case, Santos, with his experience and accomplishments as defense minister, should be able to make any needed strategy changes. Returning to a very flawed past would be way too risky for Colombia.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours