Juan Manuel Santos

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Juan Manuel Santos (2010)

Juan Manuel Santos Calderón (born August 10, 1951 in Bogotá ) is a Colombian politician of the Partido Social de Unidad Nacional , Partido de la U for short , which he initiated as a co-founder. He was the President of Colombia from August 7, 2010 to August 6, 2018 . Before that, Santos held numerous offices; from 2006 he was Minister of Defense. In 2016 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to promote the peace process in Colombia .

Life

family

Juan Manuel Santos was born into an influential political family. His great uncle Eduardo Santos was President of Colombia from 1938 to 1942 and owner of the newspaper El Tiempo . Juan's father, Enrique Santos, was the editor of this newspaper for more than 50 years; Juan's cousin Francisco Santos was vice president of his predecessor Álvaro Uribe in the presidency.

youth

Santos grew up in Bogotá and attended the Colegio San Carlos . He graduated from school as a midshipman at the Naval Academy in Cartagena . He then studied economics at the University of Kansas in the United States and graduated. He received a master's degree in economics from the London School of Economics in the UK, another in business administration and journalism from the Harvard Extension School in the United States, and in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy .

Career

Juan Manuel Santos was chief executive of the Colombian coffee delegation of the International Coffee Organization in London , manager of the largest daily newspaper in Colombia El Tiempo , and a columnist for a total of 14 other daily newspapers. In 1991 he was Minister for Foreign Trade under the government of César Gaviria . 1992 began his four-year term as Chairman of the VII United Nations Conference on Trade and Development . In 1999 he was appointed President of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and in 2000 he became Minister of Finance of Colombia. From 2001 to 2002 he was director of the Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF).

Since September 1994 Santos has headed the Good Government Foundation, which proposed a demilitarized zone to facilitate peace talks with the FARC guerrillas. According to the imprisoned former commander of the AUC , Salvatore Mancuso , Santos was actively involved in the formation of paramilitary organizations.

To support Álvaro Uribe's presidency, he founded the Partido Social de Unidad Nacional ( Partido de la U ). As defense of his country, he staggered from 2006, during his tenure, the FARC rebels a series of shocks, including the liberation of Fernando Araújo Perdomos and death Raul Reyes ' at one on the territory of Ecuador perpetrated air raid in 2008 and the bloodless liberation of the former Presidential candidate Íngrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages. Due to the air strike on a FARC camp in Ecuador, there was strong diplomatic tensions between Colombia and the neighboring states of Ecuador and Venezuela and their allies. The Ecuadorian judiciary issued an arrest warrant for Santos and applied for extradition . He was accused of multiple murders and attacks against the internal security of Ecuador. In a television discussion at the time, Santos did not want to rule out the possibility of ordering such actions on Venezuelan or Ecuadorian territory in the future.

The scandal surrounding the so-called Falsos Positivos ("false fallen guerrillas") also triggered massive international criticism . According to a secret army directive, every guerrilla fighter, whether dead or captured alive, has a bounty of the equivalent of 1,300 euros. This resulted in up to 3,000 innocent people being murdered and portrayed as fallen guerrilla fighters, for example simply by putting them on FARC uniforms.

In 2009, Santos resigned from the post of Defense Minister, stating that if Uribe did not seek a third term, he would run for president. In the presidential elections on May 30, 2010, he achieved almost an absolute majority in the first ballot with 46.6 percent of the vote. He had to face a runoff election on June 20 against his green challenger Antanas Mockus , who got 21.5 percent of the vote. During the election campaign, Santos announced that he would continue unabated with Uribe’s policy and especially the fight against the FARC. In the second ballot, the turnout was less than 40 percent and three quarters of a million voters voted invalid. Santos was able to clearly win the second ballot and received around 69 percent of the vote. He has been the incumbent President of Colombia since August 7, 2010. On June 15, 2014, Santos was confirmed in office with 50.9 percent of the vote in a runoff election. His challenger Óscar Iván Zuluaga received 45.1%.

Presidency

Although Santos was considered a hardliner as defense minister and later as a presidential candidate, at the beginning of his term in office, in contrast to his predecessor Uribe, he adopted a much more moderate tone towards the governments of his neighboring countries. Diplomatic relations were quickly resumed with Ecuador, on whose territory an air strike on a FARC camp, ordered by Santos as Defense Minister, took place in 2008. Relations with Venezuela's head of state Hugo Chavez also relaxed significantly.

Santos also showed conciliatory gestures with Chavez's successor Nicolás Maduro .

On September 26, 2016, President Santos signed a peace agreement for the government and Timoleón Jiménez for the FARC in Cartagena . On October 2, 2016, however, a wafer-thin majority of Colombians (50.2%) voted against this treaty in a referendum, causing their president a bitter political defeat. On October 7, 2016, Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The decision of the Nobel Committee was seen as support in the difficult domestic political situation. A few days later, Santos announced that the prize money - around 830,000 euros - would be donated to those affected by an earlier conflict in Colombia that left 79 dead. The money was intended to support projects and foundations that took care of the victims of the decades-long conflict with the guerrillas and campaigned for reconciliation.

In November 2016, the government and the FARC rebels agreed on a new peace treaty, the original text of which was modified and refined based on proposals from various social groups. Santos also met with his predecessor Álvaro Uribe, who had been one of the treaty's greatest critics. Uribe had called, among other things, to punish FARC members who are guilty of war crimes and to expel them from electoral offices. On November 29, 2016, the agreement passed the Colombian Senate , one day later it was also approved by the House of Representatives and thus came into force. Critic Uribe's Centro Democrático party boycotted the vote. There was also no further referendum. This called on the 5,800 FARC rebels to begin surrendering their weapons in 2016, while United Nations peacekeeping forces are to oversee the process.

Santo's successor as President was determined in a runoff election on June 17, 2018. The conservative candidate Iván Duque won for the first time against a representative of the left, Gustavo Petro , in a runoff election. Duque won the election with just under 54%.

Web links

Commons : Juan Manuel Santos  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
 Wikinews: Juan Manuel Santos  - on the news

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Nobel peace prize 2016: committee say award is 'tribute to the Colombian people' - live . theguardian.com. Accessed December 25, 2016
  2. ^ Presidencia de la Republica: Juan Manuel Santos . presidencia.gov.co. Retrieved December 25, 2016 (Spanish)
  3. ↑ El Tiempo: En sus puestos
  4. ↑ Fundación Buengobierno . Archived from the original on February 2, 1999. Retrieved January 6, 2011.
  5. ^ Propuesta de Paz . Archived from the original on February 9, 1999. Retrieved January 6, 2011.
  6. ↑ Kristofer Lengert: From bananas and stumbled senators. In: Latin America News. 2007, accessed June 25, 2015 .
  7. ^ OAS passes resolution on Colombian raid - CNN of March 6, 2008
  8. ^ Crisis after a military strike , Die Zeit 10/2008
  9. ^ Albert Köstler: Prison instead of the presidential palace. In: amerika21. May 1, 2010, accessed June 12, 2010 .
  10. ^ The blood trail of the candidate ( memento from June 4, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) , WDR Weltspiegel from May 30, 2010
  11. ↑ Santos clear winner in presidential election , Der Standard, May 31, 2010
  12. ↑ Sandra Weiss: House-high victory of the "warmonger" Der Standard , June 22, 2010
  13. ↑ Rotunda victoria de Santos en las presidenciales de Colombia , El País of June 21, 2010
  14. ↑ Santos wins runoff election ( Memento from June 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), tagesschau.de from June 16, 2014
  15. ↑ Thaw: Colombia and Ecuador Resumed Diplomatic Relations , Der Standard, December 16, 2010
  16. ↑ Confidently into the future: Latin America's new independence idw-online.de, January 19, 2011
  17. ↑ amerika21.de: Reconciling Tones between Venezuela and Colombia , July 28, 2013 (accessed on January 24, 2014)
  18. ^ Historical agreement in Colombia tagesschau.de of September 26, 2016
  19. ↑ Colombia says “No” to the nzz.ch peace agreement of October 3, 2016
  20. ^ Announcement of the donation of the Nobel Prize money
  21. ↑ Santos wants to donate prize money to victims zeit.de, October 10, 2016
  22. ↑ Giving peace a second chance sueddeutsche.de. Accessed April 18, 2018
  23. ↑ Final decision: Colombia's parliament approves new peace treaty . Mirror online. Retrieved December 25, 2016
  24. ↑ Background news «This morning» from Radio SRF , May 29, 2018, minute 5
  25. ↑ Duque wins presidential election in Colombia . DW.com. Retrieved June 28, 2018
predecessor Office successor
Álvaro Uribe Vélez President of Colombia
2010–2018 		Ivan Duque
personal data
SURNAME Santos, Juan Manuel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Santos Calderón, Juan Manuel (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Colombian President
DATE OF BIRTH August 10, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Bogotá