Colombia’s Agriculture Minister Andres Felipe Arias will resign in
March and run to be the Conservative Party‘s candidate for the 2010
senate election, party member and senate chairman Hernán Andrade
announced Monday. The minister himself denies though.
“Just like Uribe will be candidate, the Minister of Agriculture prefers to put his name on the Conservative Party’s senate list,” Andrade told newspaper El Espectador.
The Senate president added he has “no doubt Uribe is going to be a presidential candidate,” because of the position the government took during the last vote on a possible re-election of the President. By government decree, the senate held a special nocturnal session wherein the referendum demanding the re-election was approved.
Arias denied he’d aspire the presidency for 2010. In an interview with
Caracol Radio the minister said now is not the time to think about
presidential candidacies, because of the emergencies following the
rainy season.
The Conservative Party, currently part of the Uribista coalition, will in due time decide how to deal with Uribe’s possible re-election and their own candidacy.
So far, the 2010 re-election of the President hasn’t been approved. Congress has so far refused to rephraze the text of the referendum that — because of a wrong formulation of the question — allows Uribe to run for his third term no earlier than 2014.