Juan Manuel Santos re-elected President of Colombia.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
After two rounds of voting, Colombia's bitterly contested presidential election resulted in the re-election of President Juan Manuel Santos, who beat hard-right challenger Oscar Ivan Zuluaga to secure a second four-year term in office.
Analysts throughout the world hailed the decision as a victory for not just the conservative incumbent but also for the left-wing Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) guerrilla army. They say that because the contest, most observers agree, was ultimately a referendum on the prospect of peace, which is supported by both Santos and the FARC rebels but opposed by powerful internal enemies, precisely the forces against whom the president competed in the June 15 runoff. The heads of the 11 nations that, together with Colombia, make up the Union de Naciones Suramericanas (UNASUR) offered similar assessments. In congratulating Santos, each UNASUR leader described the election result as a triumph for peace.
Colombia has an opportunity now to finally close the painful chapter of its fratricidal war. Eighteen months ago, the Santos government and guerrillas initiated talks aimed at ending, once and for all, a half-century-old civil war that has cost countless thousands of lives, forced hundreds of thousands into exile, and displaced millions (NotiSur, Dec. 14, 2012). The peace process was and continues to be challenged by the losers of the June runoff --Zuluaga and his powerful patron, ex-President Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010)--who were responsible for imposing upon Colombian society one of the dirtiest electoral campaigns in memory.
Smear tactics
Taking their lead from the Uribe-Zuluaga team, campaigners for President Santos employed a fair share of dirty tricks as well, analyst Daniel Coronell noted in the weekly news magazine Semana. Both campaign teams hired sociologists, marketing experts, electronics engineers, and even hackers, and made extensive use of social-media networks to discredit anyone and everyone involved on the opposing side. Hackers working for the Zuluaga campaign went so far as to intercept President Santos' emails. They also eavesdropped on communications between government and guerrilla representatives involved in the ongoing peace talks, which began in November 2012 in Havana, Cuba (NotiSur, June 6, 2014).
"The spying was carried out not to discredit the [peace] talks in the eyes of the Colombian people but rather to let the FARC know that it was being spied on so that it would then...
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