🗞️ Presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot multiple times while giving a speech at a rally in a public park in Bogotá on Saturday afternoon. He was rushed to hospital unconscious, with at least one bullet lodged in the back of his head and a bullet wound to his leg.
It is not yet clear why Uribe was shot or who was behind the assassination attempt.
Uribe remains in intensive care and in critical condition, barely responding to brain surgery or other medical interventions, according to the Santa Fé Foundation hospital’s communiqué.
Miguel Uribe Turbay, 39 years old, is a right-wing politician - a senator and presidential pre-candidate for the Centro Democrático party. He is not a blood relative of the party’s founder Álvaro Uribe Vélez.
Uribe is also the grandson of Julio César Turbay – president of Colombia from 1978 to 1982 – and son of Diana Turbay – a journalist who was killed in 1991 in a rescue operation after being kidnapped by an armed group led by Pablo Escobar.
The perpetrator is a 15-year-old boy who fled the scene, exchanging gunfire with Uribe’s security team: he was ultimately captured, still carrying the Glock pistol with which he had carried out the attack. Two members of the public were hit by stray bullets.
Uribe’s wife, María Claudia Tarazona, has spoken to the press, saying, "Every hour is a critical hour. He fought the first battle and he fought it well. He is fighting for his life.” The family has now filed a complaint against the National Protection Unit for denying repeated requests for increased security.
Politicians and commentators from across the political spectrum have condemned the attack, and solidarity demonstrations and vigils have broken out across Colombia.
On Sunday, President Gustavo Petro held a special security council attended by ministers as well as police and military commanders, to discuss the investigation and plan increased security measures for presidential candidates in the upcoming election.
The Attorney General's Office has announced four lines of investigation into the case, with a focus on identifying the network of hired hitmen from which the perpetrator was contracted.
Today, police also revealed that the gun used in the attack was purchased in Arizona, in the United States, in August 2020; it is unknown how or when it entered Colombia.
The attack has raised the spectre of past political violence in Colombia, which suffered the assassination of five presidential candidates between 1986 and 1990. It was also the public assassination of politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948 which unleashed years of brutal partisan civil violence - a period known as ‘La Violencia.’
🗞️ Meanwhile, violence continues in Colombia’s countryside: in the Amazonian department of Guaviare, thousands have been affected by renewed clashes between two factions of FARC dissidents: Estado Mayor Central (EMC) and Estado Mayor de los Bloques y Frente (EMBF).
The two guerrilla groups are trying to consolidate territorial control of the region and its strategic corridors connecting jungle and border regions with Ecuador, Brazil, and Peru.
In recent weeks, an EMC armed roadblock on a main road has confined around 10,000 people to their villages as well as blocking access to food and essential goods, amid increasing reports of disappearances and forced recruitment of minors. On Saturday, the EMC also announced a 6pm curfew for residents of the area.
The EMBF is in talks with the government, and has even agreed to temporary relocation zones (ZUT): those processes have been focussed on Catatumbo, in the north-east. Though there are still peace negotiations with the Catatumbo-based 33rd Front of the EMBF, the Colombian army has recommenced operations against other EMBF blocks in the Amazon region, including in Caquetá and Meta.
🗞️ The labour reform debate rumbles on. The government have announced their rejection of the version of the text now in its last debate in the Senate, instead betting on a referendum in which the public would vote for a set of reform measures which Congress would then have to pass into law.
The government, supported by trade union groups, claims that bill is now too watered down, and entrenches precarious working conditions.
However, following the defeat of the referendum proposal in Congress last month, the government now plans to create the referendum via decree – an executive measure submitted to the Constitutional Court, bypassing the legislature.
Interior Minister Armando Benedetti justified the decree by arguing that the vote in Congress was subject to various procedural irregularities and was not legitimate.
However, following the announcement of the decree, President of the Senate Efraín Cepeda issued an early warning to the United Nations, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the Organisation of American States - calling the decree undemocratic and ‘a serious alteration of the constitutional order.’
Meanwhile, Petro announced via X (formerly Twitter) that any minister who does not support the decree will be removed from their post.
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