Horacio Serpa

Horacio Serpa Uribe (born January 4, 1943 in Bucaramanga , Santander Department ) is a Colombian politician and lawyer . He was a three-time presidential candidate for the Liberal Party, but never won the election.

career

origin

Serpa was born one of seven children into a lower-middle-class family. His mother was a teacher, his father studied law , but without having completed a degree. In 1960 Serpa began studying law at the Universidad del Atlántico in Barranquilla , which he graduated with top grades and honors.

Public offices

Horacio Serpa Uribe went through all three pillars of government action in Colombia.

Judiciary

After completing his studies, he began as a district judge (Juez Promiscuo Municipal) in Tona in his home province of Santander . Later he was a criminal and civil judge, public prosecutor and finally chief judge in Barrancabermeja . During this time his interest in politics began; he became a member of the youth association of the Movimiento Revolucionario Liberal (MRL), founded by former president Alfonso López Michelsen .

legislative branch

In the legislature he was first elected to Concejal (councilor) in Barrancabermeja, and in 1974 replaced Rogelio Ayala as a member of the House of Representatives of the Colombian Parliament, i.e. the lower house. In 1978 and 1982 he was re-elected to parliament for the Frente de Izquierda Liberal Auténtico (German Front of the Authentic Liberal Left , FILA) party, which he co-founded . During this time, the party in Santander Department radicalized, but Serpa remained true to the more moderate official line. In Parliament he was chairman of the Prosecution Commission ( Comisión de Acusaciones ), chairman of the Commission for the Plan of the Congress of the Republic ( Comisión del Plan del Congreso de la República ). In 1986 he was first elected to the Senate, the upper house. He became a member of the Constituent Assembly called in 1991 and represented Sampers' liberal list there . He was together with Alvaro Gomez Hurtado of the Conservative Party and Antonio Navarro Wolff , a former member of the M-19 - urban guerrilla movement , President of the Constitutional Convention.

executive

In the executive branch, Serpa, who had worked in politically difficult regions such as the Magdalena Department , where the ELN guerrilla movement was formed, became mayor of Barrancabermeja in 1970 with the support of Alfonso Gómez Gómez , a liberal patriarch in the Santander department. He has been Minister of Education in the Santander Department since 1988. During the terms of office of the liberal presidents Virgilio Barco (1986–1990) and Ernesto Samper Pizano (1994–1998) he also held the offices of Colombian government minister ( Ministro de Gobierno ) and interior minister and was presidential commissioner for peace in armed internal conflict .

Party offices

He was chairman of the board of directors of the Liberal Party in the Santander Department, chairman of the Central Political Commission of the Liberal Party and presidential candidate in 1998 and 2002. From 1998 to 1999 he was chairman of the Liberal Party at national level. Under President Uribe , against whom he was defeated in the 2002 presidential election, he was ambassador to the Organization of American States . In the current elections in 2006, he is again the liberal top candidate.

Serpa and the "Proceso 8,000"

In 1981 Serpa met Ernesto Samper Pizano , who at the time was a leader in the election campaign of the former President Alfonso López Michelsen . When Samper ran his presidential candidacy in 1990 and sought support from left-wing liberal circles, he found support and support from Serpa, leader of the left-liberal FILA in Santander.

Serpa was named Samper's campaign manager for the 1994 presidential election, which Samper won. Soon after, however, Samper, Serpio and others were accused by the defeated rival candidate Andrés Pastrana of having financed their election campaign with money from drug trafficking (the so-called "narco-casset"). It was from these allegations that the greatest political scandal in Colombian history developed. Serpa took over the defense of Sampers in the process that had started before the Supreme Court, the " Proceso 8,000 " , although he was suspected of being himself . There was no evidence that Samper knew about the drug money himself. He accused the treasurer of his election campaign, Fernando Botero Zea (son of the painter Fernando Botero ), of having carried out these transactions without authorization.

Serpa himself was eventually acquitted of the charges against him by the House of Representatives Prosecution Commission. However, due to his appearance in the process, the echo in the national and international media world and the political tensions with the USA resulting from the process, he became a controversial media figure. This had an impact on his candidacy in the 1998 presidential election. In the election campaign in question, he had to deal with numerous representatives from business, university and, above all, journalists who formed a group called "TOCONSER" ( Todos contra Serpa , dt. All against Serpa ) and attacked him hard, which he in similar, linguistically controversial kind.

Negotiator in the armed internal conflict

During his time as a regional politician in Santander, Serpa had campaigned for the peaceful settlement of strikes and social conflicts. During the tenure of President Belisario Betancur Cuartas , he participated in negotiations with the guerrilla groups in the country and was a member of various commissions, which, however, did not achieve any tangible results for the end of the civil war in Colombia.

When he became government minister towards the end of President Virgilio Barco's term of office , he was involved in the negotiations on the demobilization of the guerrilla groups Ejército de Liberación Popular (EPL), Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT) and Commando Quintín Lame . In 1992, President César Gaviria sent him to Tlaxcala , Mexico , where Serpa led the failed attempt to negotiate with local guerrillas.

Under President Samper, he made another attempt to come to an agreement with the FARC , but it was unsuccessful. He also took part in negotiations initiated by the German government with the ELN in Bonn , which failed, among other things, because Serpa had ignored the guidelines of the Colombian government in secret negotiations or had not sufficiently coordinated with it, which resulted in a political scandal led in government.

Results of his presidential candidacies

1998

• Andrés Pastrana : 6,086,507 votes (50.39%)
• Horacio Serpa: 5,620,719 votes (46.53%)

(in the runoff)

2002

• Alvaro Uribe Vélez : 5,862,655 votes (53.048%)
• Horacio Serpa: 3,514,779 votes (31.803%)

Uribe won with an absolute majority in the first ballot. This was the first time since this election mode was introduced in 1991 that a candidate was elected in the first ballot. Serpa declared his defeat and initially announced that he did not want to actively apply for a new candidacy in the next elections. He became Colombia's ambassador to the OAS.

2006

In the 2006 presidential elections, Serpa again prevailed as his party's candidate. In the first ballot on May 28, in which Álvaro Uribe received an absolute majority, Serpa only finished third with 11.84% of the vote, behind the center-left candidate Carlos Gaviria from the Polo Democrático Alternativo .

Web links

• Page from Serpa's presidential candidacy 2006 (Spanish)