Terror, uncertainty, paranoia

COLOMBIA - In Brief 09 Jun 2025 by Andrés Escobar Arango

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It is challenging to interpret the events unfolding in Colombia. There are many antecedents from a distant past that Colombians thought were behind us. Back in the early nineties, many presidential candidates were assassinated in Colombia by the dark forces of narco-trafficking and paramilitarism. Later, during the Samper administration, Álvaro Gómez, a former candidate and a prominent figure of the opposition, was assassinated; thirty years after those events, the intellectual and material perpetrators have not been identified. The waves of terror and leaders’ assassinations that have plagued some periods of Colombian history would make it difficult to pinpoint the chain of cause and effect, since it is likely to be a multilayered phenomenon, with interests pointing in many directions, political, economic, and regional. The masterminds behind the assassination attempt against right-wing candidate Miguel Uribe likely sought to produce the sense of disorientation, nightmare, lack of trust, and helplessness that Colombians are now feeling. In that sense, this sad event hit Colombia right where it hurts the most. We were in the beginning phase of the presidential campaign. According to the current polls, shown in Figure 1, the candidates' general standing indicates that anything can happen. Gustavo Bolívar, from the extreme left, Claudia López and Sergio Fajardo, center-left, and Vicky Dávila, center-right, are currently leading. Yet, their percentages of vote intention vary widely from one week to the next. Something similar happened among the candidates who could participate in the primaries of the center-right, Centro Democrático party. In our recent conversation with ...