Uribe invites an internal consultation to define presidential candidate

The former president of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, summoned to an extraordinary meeting on Tuesday the directors, regional leaders and candidates of the Centro Democrático party, of which he is its natural leader. At this meeting, he defined a five-member program committee, to decide how to consult the position of the militants for the presidential elections.

Uribe elected these parliamentarians as the five leaders of the program committee: Senators María Fernanda Cabal, Paloma Valencia, Miguel Uribe Turbay and Alirio Barrera, plus House Representative Oscar Darío Pérez.

In addition, he asked that the opinion of the two-time former presidential candidate, Oscar Iván Zuluaga and his vice-presidential formula be taken into consideration until this Monday — when Zuluaga made the personal decision to renounce his aspiration — Alicia Eugenia Silva.

The commission's idea is that they decide, in the shortest possible time, how the inclinations of the more than 600,000 members of the Centro Democrático party will be consulted. In addition, they must establish a series of fundamental programmatic points that will support any decision they make on the way forward for the party.

During the same meeting, which was broadcast on social networks and was accompanied by the press, each of the five elected leaders had the opportunity to express their opinion to the rest of the management on issues such as Zuluaga's resignation, the times when the militant survey should be conducted and the mea culpa with which Uribe opened the meeting.

María Fernanda Cabal, the party's second most voted senator, said that the Democratic Center began a moment of adversity and exercised significant leadership since 2014, but that the Duque Government allied itself with people who were enemies of the community and made setbacks that were not Uribe's responsibility.

Cabal added that the voters of Petro are not its voters and that it is the party's responsibility to make the non-uribists and the undecided fall in love again, as well as to make coalitions with sectors such as Justa Libres and National Salvation.

For her part, Paloma Valencia confessed that she was upset that some members of the Democratic Center left Zuluaga and Silva alone, who had been elected by a mechanism agreed with the five pre-candidates — including her — alone. According to the Caucan senator, he was the only candidate in the deck that represented total disagreement with the Final Agreement with the FARC, shown in the plebiscite.

She agreed to a period of two weeks, seven weeks left for the first round, to define what will happen next with the opinion of the militancy.

For his part, the former governor of Casanare and senator-elect, Alirio Josué Barrera, assured that one of the reasons why the Democratic Center lost so many seats in these legislatures has to do with the fact that Uribe's absence from the card did not attract the same votes. He agreed to participate in coalitions.

Miguel Uribe Turbay assured that he has extensive experience in the psyche of the candidate for the Historical Pact, Gustavo Petro, because he was the opposition leader in the Bogotá Council during his tenure. He said that, just as Uribe thought of the country's welfare above political calculations, the party should act in the same way.

Other visible party figures, such as Fabio Valencia Cossio, and the leader of the Uribista youth, took the floor to say that the majority of the Democratic Center was inclined to vote for Fico Gutiérrez and that it was redundant to call for consultations.

The former president and others present disagreed with this idea for several reasons. Firstly, Uribe fears that making such a decision without the militancy will cause Fico to receive the stigma of “Uribe's candidate” and eventually lose the elections. “A lot has been the one who is not in the way,” he said.

In addition, he believes that regional or Christian leadership and militancy might have different views and that it would be worth considering; even if the final decision is to give the party the freedom to choose the candidate that each militant considers ideal.

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