Father of killed Colombian candidate Miguel Uribe relaunches presidential bid

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The father of slain Colombian presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay announced his plans to run for the nation’s presidency on Tuesday, despite falling out with his son’s party the Democratic Center.

In a campaign event in Bogota, Miguel Uribe Londoño said that he will try to defend his son’s political legacy as he campaigns for the presidential election which will be held at the end of May.

“Today I tell the world, that my son is the one who should be here” Uribe Londoño said. “He was killed so that no one would make the bad guys uncomfortable … but Miguel lives.”

Uribe Londoño, 73, will be running on behalf of Democratic Colombia, a small party that began as a movement to defend the rights of Afro Colombians and currently has one seat in the nation’s Congress.

Uribe Londoño, a former senator with no apparent ties to Afro Colombian movements, had initially attempted to run for the presidency representing his son’s party, the Democratic Center.

But Uribe Londoño had a dispute with the party’s leadership after rumors emerged that he would support an independent candidate if he was not selected as the party’s presidential candidate. Uribe Londoño eventually resigned his membership in the Democratic Center, a party he helped to establish over a decade ago.

More than two dozen candidates are currently running for Colombia’s presidency, although the field is expected to narrow down in early March, when several candidates compete in interparty primaries.

Ivan Cepeda, a senator from President Gustavo Petro’s left-wing coalition known as the Historical Pact, is currently ahead in several polls. He is followed by Abelardo de La Espriella, an ultraconservative lawyer who has said he admires Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and has promised to take an iron-fisted approach against criminal groups.

President Gustavo Petro is barred by Colombia’s constitution for running for reelection.

Miguel Uribe Turbay, was shot during a campaign rally last year, and died from his injuries in August after spending two months in intensive care.

The attack on the senator, who was shot in the head several times, represented a major setback for Colombia, a country that has long struggled with political violence but where some important steps to reduce violence had been taken recently, including a peace deal with the nation’s largest rebel group.

Colombian officials have arrested several people, including a teenager, for Uribe Turbay’s killing, but they have not determined who ordered the hit or why. Colombia’s Defense Ministry and the Attorney General’s office have said previously that the attack was possibly orchestrated by a rebel group known as Segunda Marquetalia, which is led by former members of the FARC, the guerilla group that made a peace deal with Colombia’s government in 2016.

Uribe Turbay was an outspoken critic of Colombia’s drug trafficking groups and had promised during his campaign that if he were elected he would increase military pressure on rebel groups, that have been in peace talks with the Petro administration.