Unsucessful Conservative pre-presidential candidate Andres Felipe Arias made an urgent call for his fellow party members to form an alliance with Partido de la U’s Juan Manuel Santos in the case of a second round presidential election, in the hope that the move would block the Green Party’s Antanas Mockus‘ path to the presidency.
Arias reiterated his previously stated concern that if Mockus were elected president, it would spell the end for current President Alvaro Uribe’s “democratic security” policy.
“I don’t want my country to end up in the hands of a person who is ambiguous on matters of order and security; who has not told us if he would be capable of bombing [FARC leaders] “Mono Jojoy” or “[Alfonso] Cano,” if he were given the coordinates; who has not said how he would he would react to communism in the 21st century, if it were to dare to cross the border,” Arias said.
“We are not going to beat the FARC with sunflowers, with mimes, with clowns… we have to finish these bandits off and hit them hard, and this requires a line of thinking that we have been defending,” Arias continued, referring to Mockus’ unusual approach to policy.
During his time as Bogota mayor, Mockus hired 20 mimes to poke fun at traffic violators, because he believed that Colombians were more afraid of being ridiculed than being fined. The sunflower is the symbol of the Green Party.
“I want my country to end up governed by a democratic security coalition, that coalition can be built by my party and the Partido de la U,” Arias proposed.
Uribe’s protege, nicknamed “Uribito,” also asked young Colombians not to fall victim to “the euphoria of Facebook” and be tricked into thinking that Mockus could maintain democratic security, because “what that candidate would do would be to extradite President Alvaro Uribe.”
Mockus said earlier this week in an interview that if the Supreme Court were hypothetically to order Uribe’s extradition for his responsibility in the Colombian military’s 2008 cross-border attack on a FARC camp, as president Mockus would approve the extradition.
The Green Party candidate clarified in a presidential debate Tuesday night that he had misunderstood the issue, because he thought the court was in charge of extradition orders. (The Colombian president is the one who has the final say on extraditions).
Arias lost out to Conservative presidential candidate Noemi Sanin in the party primaries. The former agriculture minister has not supported Sanin and the two have publically clashed.
Almost 100 Conservative Party members have jumped ship and moved to Santos’ camp since the party primaries. Sanin’s popularity in voter polls is waning.
The latest voter poll places Santos and Mockus neck-and-neck in the race for the Colombian presidency. The previous poll released by Ipsos-Napoleon Franco on Monday, placed Mockus in the lead with 38% of voter support, while support for Santos slipped to 29%.
The latest voter poll also indicates that if Santos and Mockus were to face off in a second round election, Mockus would win.
Mockus’ increasing popularity has surprised analysts and political opponents, who so far have seemed unable to stop the “green wave,” despite attacks on Mockus’ proposed security policies.
Colombians will head to the polling booths on May 30 to elect their next president. If none of the candidates wins 50% plus one of the vote, the two most voted for candidates will face off in a second round election.