Colombia’s political foundations, as well as its ability to quell armed rebel groups, are under severe stress. An assassination attempt on a presidential candidate, followed by an alleged plot to overthrow the country’s first left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, has jolted the nation. Yet the Latin American country’s commitment to democracy is holding so far.
“We are a country that has bled, but also one that has built,” wrote Foreign Minister Laura Sarabia in the Miami Herald June 23, acknowledging a long history of civil war and political violence. “And millions of Colombians still believe that ideas, not bullets, will shape our future.”
After the June 7 shooting of Sen. Miguel Uribe Turbay, a conservative running for president, both government and opposition leaders condemned the attack. “This act of violence is an attack … against democracy, freedom of thought, and the legitimate exercise of politics in Colombia,” President Petro’s office stated. Security forces arrested the 15-year-old gunman and others, but have not yet determined who ordered the attack or why.
Colombia has enjoyed a measure of peace since a landmark 2016 pact with the country’s then-main rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (known as FARC). Yet more than a dozen splinter cells are still active, many affiliated with drug and criminal cartels. Some groups recruit youth to participate in armed violence and targeted hits.
Political tensions have risen as Mr. Petro’s agenda to pass liberal reforms and negotiate with remaining rebels has faltered. After the assassination attempt, however, the Senate quickly passed the president’s labor reforms. And, after the revelations by El País newspaper about an alleged plot to overthrow Mr. Petro, center and right-wing opposition politicians unanimously condemned such a notion.
Ordinary Colombians have no wish to see a return of the rampant political violence of the past. This experience is in part what’s driving a younger generation of political leaders to actively participate in shaping Colombia’s democracy. Several of them – such as Mr. Uribe, Sen. María José Pizarro, and Sen. Juan Manuel Galán and his brother, Bogotá Mayor Carlos Fernando Galán – lost a parent to killings during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
As security analyst Sergio Guzmán put it to the Miami Herald, “What the country really needs right now is a president who serves as a healer.”
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