La Política Colombiana

Via the BBC: Colombian politician is arrested

The brother of Colombias foreign minister has been arrested on suspicion of ties with paramilitaries involved in the countrys drug trade.

Senator Alvaro Araujo is the highest ranking politician to be arrested as part of the investigation.

Further warrants have been issued for five other lawmakers allied to President Alvaro Uribe.

Three other lawmakers were jailed in November for links to paramilitaries fighting leftwing rebel groups.

The penetration of electoral politics by violent actors is hardly a shock. The real question is how far these investigations will go and to what degree it will possible to excise some connections from electoral politics.

At a minimum we can hope that this is the case:

Analysts say that the arrests are encouraging as they show increasing transparency in Colombian politics.

“Everyone knew the paramilitaries had infiltrated Congress,” said Pablo Casas of Colombian think-tank Security and Democracy.

“The good news is that the justice system is showing a certain level of independence.”

Via El Tiempo:
Murió el senador liberal Luis Guillermo Vélez, por una falla cardiaca

De 63 años de edad, el dirigente había sido internado esta mañana en la clínica Cardioinfantil de Bogotá, donde falleció de un infarto agudo del miocardio, según el parte médico.

Luis Guillermo Vélez hizo un amplio recorrido por la vida pública colombiana que incluyó el ejercicio de la política, la diplomacia, el periodismo y la cátedra universitaria. Fue senador por el Partido Liberal durante cuatro periodos consecutivos desde 1991, y en la última legislatura (2006) fue elegido como senador por el Partido de la U.

[…]

Y el año pasado, después de una agria polémica con la Dirección Nacional Liberal por haber apoyado la reelección del presidente Álvaro Uribe, Vélez se distanció de las directivas de esta colectividad e inició las convocatorias a los parlamentarios uribistas que luego dieron origen a la formación del partido de la U, del cual fue dirigente nacional y su coordinador en Antioquia.

63 is young, to be sure.

In terms of an “inside baseball” observation, I find the headline and story interesting, insofar as Vélez is identified as a “Liberal” when he was most recently elected as a member (and party leader) of the U. This is a typical reaction in Colombian journalism (and often in Colombian scholarship)–once a member of one of the traditional parties, always a member. To put this in semi-perspective it would be like Jim Jeffords (who left the GOP in 2024) having his obituary headlined “Republican Senator dies.”