Colombia: ruling conservative party appoints presidential candidate

The conservative party in power in Colombia, the Democratic Center, on Monday nominated its candidate for the presidential election of spring 2022, to which the left is currently favored.

Oscar Zuluaga, a 62-year-old businessman and politician, had previously been an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2014, narrowly won by Juan Manuel Santos (in power from 2010 to 2018).

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He was nominated against four other candidates after an internal ballot organized by his party, led by ex-president Alvaro Uribe Velez, an all-powerful figure and tutelary of the Colombian right who was president from 2002 to 2010. Oscar Zuluaga, who was also Alvaro Uribe's finance minister, pledged Monday to work for

Sometimes criticized for his lack of charisma, he will have to do a lot for his party to retain power, while outgoing president Ivan Duque, also from the Democratic Center, reached records of unpopularity in the polls and the law does not allow him to stand for a second term.

It is the candidate of the left (who has never governed in Colombia), Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla who became mayor of Bogota, who currently dominates these same polls, and is running for the presidency for the third time. Oscar Zuluaga assures that he wants to build a "consensus" in a society that is still very polarized since the signing in 2016 of a historic peace agreement with the guerrillas of the Marxist FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), which the Democratic Center has always opposed. because judging it too favorable to the rebels.

“We see a coalition of the populist left with a discourse against freedom, against the free market and against the public force, which seeks to impose a model which has already failed in Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina and Nicaragua and which fails already in Peru ”

, denounced Monday the new candidate of the Democratic Center.