Uribe protege wins presidency
Source: Agencies |
June 22, 2010, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
A 58-YEAR-OLD US-educated economist who dealt withering blows to leftist rebels as defense minister has won Colombia's presidency by the largest margin in modern history.
Juan Manuel Santos got 69 percent of the vote in Sunday's runoff in a ringing endorsement of his promise to continue the US-backed security policies of outgoing conservative President Alvaro Uribe that he helped craft.
Former two-time Bogota mayor Antanas Mockus, a maverick outsider running a clean-government campaign as the Green Party's candidate, finished with 28 percent in an election marked by low turnout.
Surrounded by his wife and three children during a victory speech to 10,000 supporters in a Bogota coliseum, Santos lionized the man whose defense ministry he ran in 2006-2009.
"If we have come so far it's because we have been standing on the shoulders of giants," said Santos, the grandnephew of a president from one of Colombia's most influential families. "This is also your triumph, President Uribe."
More than 3 percent of voters tendered protest ballots on Sunday, indicating dissatisfaction with the conservative establishment that Santos represents - nearly all the losers of the May 30 first round endorsed him - and Mockus' refusal to stand in opposition to it.
Juan Manuel Santos got 69 percent of the vote in Sunday's runoff in a ringing endorsement of his promise to continue the US-backed security policies of outgoing conservative President Alvaro Uribe that he helped craft.
Former two-time Bogota mayor Antanas Mockus, a maverick outsider running a clean-government campaign as the Green Party's candidate, finished with 28 percent in an election marked by low turnout.
Surrounded by his wife and three children during a victory speech to 10,000 supporters in a Bogota coliseum, Santos lionized the man whose defense ministry he ran in 2006-2009.
"If we have come so far it's because we have been standing on the shoulders of giants," said Santos, the grandnephew of a president from one of Colombia's most influential families. "This is also your triumph, President Uribe."
More than 3 percent of voters tendered protest ballots on Sunday, indicating dissatisfaction with the conservative establishment that Santos represents - nearly all the losers of the May 30 first round endorsed him - and Mockus' refusal to stand in opposition to it.
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