After six years of increasingly vile political rivalry, Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos said he wants to reconcile with his predecessor Alvaro Uribe.
In an interview with Spanish news agency EFE, the president who has just begun his last year in office said that a reconciliation would be the “most convenient for the country.”
I would like to leave the country much less polarized than it is. For me it would be an immense pleasure. I think what would be most convenient for the country would be to be able to reconcile with my predecessor, former President Uribe.
President Juan Manuel Santos
Santos became a political ally of Uribe ahead of the 2002 elections when both politicians left the Liberal Party to form a new political movement that helped secure Uribe’s 2002 election.
The two broke after Santos’ election in 2010 when the current president appointed numerous Uribe critics as cabinet members and, most importantly, as Prosecutor General in a time when criminal cases against the former president began piling up.
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The rift widened further after 2012 when Santos formally announced peace talks with the country’s largest rebel group, the FARC.
The eventual peace deal that ended 52 years of armed conflict between the Marxist guerrillas and the state further radicalized the hard right former president accused of multiple war crimes.
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The country needs this reconciliation. If we can reconcile with the FARC how are not be able to reconcile among the Colombians that unfortunately for 200 years of republican life have had more wars than any other country in Latin America?
President Juan Manuel Santos
A 200-year history lesson to understand Colombia’s 52-year conflict
According to Santos, “the moment of change and to live together and in peace” has come.
The president has tried to reconcile with his predecessor on multiple occasions, but without success.
The political division has spurred a major social division between those in favor of or indifferent to the ongoing peace process and those opposing it.
