Colombian presidential candidate Humberto de la Calle, the leading candidate to represent Colombia’s Liberal party, continued to rail against former center-right president Álvaro Uribe today in attempt to rally the candidate’s leftist base. De la Calle held a press conference on Tuesday and asked liberals to rally around his candidacy in order to defeat opponents on the right in the 2018 presidential elections.
“The fundamental objective for Colombia right now is to create an enormous coalition and keep open the route to peace”, the candidate said. Humberto de la Calle was the lead negotiator in Colombia’s 2016 Havana Accords. The treaties signed with FARC terrorists remain deeply unpopular in the country and were rejected in a national-wide referendum. Current Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos ignored the results of the referendum and implemented the accords without popular support.
El objetivo fundamental de Colombia es conformar una enorme coalición que mantenga la ruta de la paz y abra senderos de cambio
— Humberto de la Calle (@DeLaCalleHum) September 12, 2017
“Let me be very clear, it is necessary that we defeat Álvaro Uribe and Vargas Lleras“, the candidate added. De la Calle said that it is fundamental that Colombia continue to implement the terms of the 2016 Havana Accords.
Ex-Colombian President Álvaro Uribe is often used by the left as a way of rallying the liberal base. While Uribe remains widely popular among conservatives and in his native Antioquia, he is despised by the left and often categorized as being extreme right, both by liberals and in Colombia’s liberal media.
De la Calle also emphasized the need for liberals to unite early in the forthcoming election season.
“I believe it’s an error for the Liberal party to be divided among multiple candidates and to not select our own candidate until March, it’s simply the suicide of liberalism. The idea will fracture the Liberal party. A party divided will not be in any condition to compete“, he said. He called for primary elections to be held earlier, as soon as November of this year.
