Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, who became known for being held hostage for six years by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), announced this Tuesday (18) that she is a pre-candidate for the presidency of her country. The election is scheduled for the end of May.
Betancourt was under the control of the guerrillas from 2002 to 2008. The politician was in the presidential campaign when she was kidnapped by the rebels and taken into captivity in the Amazon rainforest. During her six years as a hostage, she was tied, on several occasions, with metal chains to a tree so that she would not escape.
During the period, she also had to make videos with the rebels to prove that she was alive. In the first recordings, Betancourt asked the authorities to investigate the circumstances that had led to his kidnapping, but then he began to implore the government to resume peace negotiations with the guerrillas. The footage circulated the world and politics became a symbol of international peace campaigns in Colombia.
In 2008, a military operation with soldiers disguised as aid workers managed to reach captivity and rescue hostages held by FARC, Betancourt among them. According to the Colombian government, there was no exchange of fire during the action.
Peace between the authorities and the guerrillas would only be established eight years later, when the then Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, backed by strong international support, managed to approve the agreement he had made with the FARC in Parliament, even though the population had voted against the resolution. The negotiations won the Colombian leader a Nobel Peace Prize.
Today, the rebel group is formally a political party — which at first kept the acronym, but changed its meaning to the Alternative Revolutionary Force of the Commons, before renaming itself the Comunes. Under the peace agreement, the group received ten seats in Congress after the pact was signed.
This Tuesday, Betancourt announced that he will run for president for OxÃgeno Verde, the same acronym as when he ran for office 20 years ago and which is now part of a coalition of centrist forces. For that, she will need to go through an electoral consultation in March that brings together candidates from the other parties in the alliance and, if she wins, she will contest the first round of the presidential elections on May 29.
Names such as the progressive intellectual Alejandro GavÃria, the centrist Sergio Fajardo (known as the man who gave new life to MedellÃn) and Juan Manuel Galán, son of the historical liberal assassinated in the middle of the campaign in the 1980s, are also competing to be head of the coalition.
“Today I am here to finish what I started with many of you in 2002. With the conviction that Colombia is ready to change course,” the politician told a news conference. “I am here to claim the rights of 51 million Colombians who are not finding justice because we live in a system designed to reward criminals.”
Betancourt intends to embrace the fight against corruption as one of the pillars of his campaign. “My story is the story of all Colombians,” he said. “While my colleagues and I were chained by the neck, Colombian families were chained by corruption, violence and injustice.”
The policy also promises to defend social measures to alleviate social inequality in Colombia. Last year, thousands of protesters took to the streets for weeks to demand an end to the debate on a tax reform seen as harmful by a portion of the population, in addition to more jobs, greater access to health and education and the implementation of a minimum basic income during the pandemic. “I believe in a world with a woman’s vision,” she said.
In the presidential race, however, the leader of the Greens should find it difficult to beat more established politicians. Since being released from captivity, she has withdrawn from public life and gone to France, where she lived with her family until last year.
His candidacy will also begin months after those of other names, who have already traveled around the country to campaign – notably the leftist Gustavo Petro, former mayor of Bogotá, is now ahead in the polls.
On the other hand, it presents itself as a centrist alternative to the dispute between the right of current president Iván Duque and the left of Petro. “For decades we only had bad options: extreme right, extreme left. Now is the time to have a center option”, he defended.
Bogotá political risk analyst Sergio Guzman reckons that with more than a dozen candidates still vying for Colombia’s presidency and the primaries just two months away, it will be difficult for Betancourt to make an impact. According to him, although the Greens’ policy “represents reconciliation”, Colombians have other priorities at the moment. “The main feeling right now among voters is frustration with a system that doesn’t provide opportunity,” Guzmán told the Associated Press. “And there are other candidates who have done a good job tapping into that feeling.”
In addition to Petro’s left and the centrist alliance, the ultra-conservative Óscar Iván Zuluaga, who also ran in 2014, when he lost to Juan Manuel Santos, is in the running. A recent poll shows that he has 12.7% of voting intentions, while the leftist has 43%. It is in this wide space that the center of Betancourt tries to play the main chips.​
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