Germán Vargas Lleras

Germán Vargas Lleras

Germán Vargas Lleras (born February 19, 1962 in Bogotá ) is a Colombian lawyer and politician. He served several governments in his country as Minister of the Interior, Justice and Housing and as Vice President of Colombia (2014-2017) in the Juan Manuel Santos government .

biography

education

Germán Vargas Lleras is the grandson of former President Carlos Lleras Restrepo . After Vargas Lleras started his education at several private schools in Bogotá, such as the Liceo Francés de Bogotá and Gimnasio Campestre , he finished his higher education at the Gimnasio José Joaquín Casas , an institution of Jaime Leal González and his family. Upon graduation, Vargas Lleras studied at Georgetown High School in Washington, DC and graduated from the law faculty at Universidad del Rosario , where he received a law degree. Further studies took place at the Institut Ortega y Gasset of the Complutense University Madrid in Spain , where he studied political science and public administration .

Political career

Vargas Llera entered politics at an early age at the age of 30, initially as a councilor in Bojacá , a small village a few kilometers west of Bogotá in Cundinamarca , and from 1992 to 1998 as a councilor of Bogotá for the Partido Liberal Colombiano , which he established in 2002 left again. He was later a member of the Congress for twelve years and three terms (1988–1990; 1992–1994; 1994–1998) and a close ally for eight years, first of Álvaro Uribe and finally of Juan Manuel Santos , whom he served as the “right hand man”. From 1998 to 2008 he was in the Senate , in 2003 he was elected President.

Germán Vargas Lleras has promoted and led political movements whose names promise change, such as Nuevo Liberalismo (New Liberalism, 1981) and Cambio Radical (Radical Change, 2003), but move within the liberal-conservative spectrum. So he always remained an active member of the traditional nomenklatura of Colombia.

Assassinations

Vargas Lleras survived three assassinations. A letter bomb exploded in his hands in 2002 and he lost two fingers. He was attacked with a car bomb on October 10, 2005 , presumably by the National Liberation Army (ELN), from which he emerged unharmed. In the same year another letter bomb was added, but it was intercepted beforehand. In 2008 he left the Senate to prepare for his first presidential candidacy in 2010 with his Partido Cambio Radical .

Candidate presidency 2018

In 2017 he left the government to move to the Casa de Nariño , the official residence of the President of Colombia , in 2018 , i.e. to become President of Colombia . In the first ballot he was knocked off fourth.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Website of the Universidad del Rosario: Candidato: Germán Vargas Lleras urosario.edu.co, accessed on January 21, 2018 (Spanish)
2. ↑ Partido Cambio Radical website partidocambioradical.org, accessed on January 21, 2018 (Spanish)

Web links

Commons : Germán Vargas Lleras  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Presidential Campaign Website (Spanish)
• In Semana : Political life with important stations (Spanish)
• German Vargas Lleras, a political biography (English)
• In "La Silla Vacía": Germán Vargas Lleras (Spanish)