Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay survived an assassination attempt on Saturday 7 June when he was shot twice while delivering a speech during a campaign rally in Bogota’s Fontibon neighbourhood. Uribe Turbay, the pre-candidate for the hard-right Democratic Centre Party (CD), remains in serious condition in hospital.
In an extraordinary display of unity, Colombian political parties from across the spectrum came together to condemn the attack and express their hopes for his recovery. ‘We unite our voices to express the most forceful rejection and condemnation of this recent attack’, said a statement co-signed by, among others, Uribe Turbay’s CD, the Liberal Party, the governing Historic Pact progressive coalition, the Conservative Party, the Green Alliance and Comunes, the Party of the former FARC guerrillas.
For his part, President Petro said ‘I hope Miguel Uribe Turbay survives. That’s what I want most of all, and that’s what society should feel: that, above all, we must join our hearts and energies to help him be well.’ Large rallies against political violence took place in Bogota and elsewhere. On 10 June, following an escalation in violence in southwest Colombia, Petro referred to that situation and the attack on Uribe Turbay. ‘Here what is needed is union, dialogue and peace,’ he tweeted.
The attack highlights the violence that still plagues Colombian society and the lack of security guarantees for political activists. President Petro has subsequently revealed that all the members of his cabinet had recently received death threats to their families. It is still common for left-wing leaders and activists to receive threats or be targeted, with over 70 social activists killed so far this year, according to the INDEPAZ human rights NGO. The 2016 Peace Agreement envisioned a political pact for peace which committed civil society and the Colombian state to working towards a culture of peace and providing guarantees for all political actors.
Despite Colombian political forces having pulled together to condemn the attack on Uribe Turbay, the US government struck a markedly different tone in its reaction. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, without evidence, blamed the attack on ‘violent leftist rhetoric coming from the highest levels of the Colombian government’. A long-time critic of Gustavo Petro, Rubio has cynically exploited the shooting at the same time as the US has cut USAID funding for the peace process and created problems for ongoing peace dialogues by issuing arrest warrants for insurgent negotiators.
While Uribe Turbay belonged to the hard-right Democratic Centre, historically the vast majority of presidential candidates assassinated have belonged to progressive political parties. In 1987, Patriotic Union (UP) presidential candidate Jaime Pardo Leal was killed, followed in 1990 by Bernardo Jaramillo, another UP candidate. The violence against the UP is one of the major cases currently under investigation by Colombia’s Transitional Justice Court, the JEP.
In 1989, Luis Carlos Galán of the New Liberalism party and the favourite to win the election was murdered in Bogota. The following year, presidential candidate Carlos Pizarro Leongómez, of the M-19 Democratic Alliance, was murdered in Bogota, just weeks ahead of the election. His daughter, María José Pizarro, is a current senator in the governing coalition of President Petro. She attended Labour Party Conference in 2022 in a visit organised by JFC.
It is this tragic legacy of political violence that the Colombian trade unions and social movement have long struggled against, that the 2016 Peace Agreement signed by President Santos and the FARC was intended to overcome by establishing a political pact for peace, and that the Petro government’s ‘Total Peace’ initiative hoped to confine to history. But there are many vested interests in the continuation of conflict, and many of its root social and economic causes remain. If what has so far been achieved is not to be lost, the international community must pull together to support the forces of peace in Colombia by ensuring the full implementation of the peace accords – including the security and legal guarantees for all political actors that it enshrined in the constitution.