Two new candidates joined the Liberal Party to run for the 2010 Presidency, therefore promising to openly reject President Uribe’s attempt at reelection.
Alfonso Lopez Caballero, son of former president Alfonso Lopez
Michelsen, and former Governor of Antioquia Anibal Gaviria Correa join
five other candidates in hopes of becoming Colombia’s 57th
president.
Gaviria Correa called for “renovation, renovation, renovation” inside the Liberal Party and in the country’s government body.
The other candidates who have already registered for the
Liberal Party’s convention, to be held on September 27, are Senators Cecilia
Lopez and Hector Heli Rojas, former Attorney General Alfonso Gomez
Mendez, politician Ivan Marulanda, and former Minister of Defense
Rafael Pardo.
The announcement makes the Liberal Party the first party in Colombia to fully reveal its candidates. Cesar Gaviria,
head of the Liberal Party, will have the task of choosing one of the
seven candidates to confront current President Alvaro Uribe if he
succeeds in his bid to run for a third term.
Though Lopez Caballero said he is against
Uribe’s reelection, he told a local radio station that he will not
attack the president in his campaign. The announcement comes as a surprise as Gaviria told candidates that in order to register they must “swear” to openly reject Uribe.
Expected presidential candidate Sen. Juan Fernando Cristo told journalists Wednesday he will not register for the convention because he does not want to neglect his work on the victims law being debated in the House of Representatives.
That same day Sen. Heli Rojas announced his candidacy without any previous notice. He pointed out the Uribe supporters as turning a deaf ear to many proposals in Congress.
Speculations that Sen. Piedad Cordoba was going to run have been thrown out what with the closing of the registration period Thursday.
Campaign Promises
Former Minister of Defense Pardo Rueda announced his candicacy Tuesday and said he will work for “equality.” Meanwhile Marulanda called for his party’s return to social-democracatic ideals.
Last week Gomez Mendez and Sen. Lopez registered
for the convention. The former attorney general insisted that as
president in 2010 he will inaugurate the “Third Liberal Republic,”
based on “a State that fulfills its promises and on a country
at peace with social justice.”
Sen. Lopez assured that she would concern herself with Colombians’ rights.
