Luis Eduardo Garzón

Luis Eduardo Garzón

Luis Eduardo Garzón (nickname Lucho ) (born February 11, 1951 in Bogotá ) is a left-wing Colombian politician . He was Lord Mayor of the capital Bogotá between 2004 and December 2007 .

Political career

Garzón studied law at the Universidad Libre de Colombia and began his political career as an activist with the Colombian Oil Workers Union.

2002 presidential elections

With a very small campaign budget, Garzón, who had already made a name for himself in Bogotá as an independent politician and good speaker, ran in the 2002 presidential elections . He achieved the third-best result with 680,245 votes (6.16%), and Álvaro Uribe Vélez , who was heavily criticized by him , was elected president.

Party formation

In 2003 Garzón was one of the founders of the new left-wing Independent Democratic Pole ( Spanish: Polo Democratico Independiente , PDI), which formed after the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2002 as a new opposition party against the government of President Álvaro Uribe Vélez .

mayor

Luis Eduardo Garzón ran in the local elections in Bogotá on October 26, 2003 for the PDI. With 47% of the vote, he won against the journalist Juan Lozano, who had been supported by President Uribe and large parts of the Colombian media landscape and received 40% of the vote. Garzón carried out this election campaign with a very low budget; He received support from the left wing of the Liberal Party.

On January 1, 2004, Garzón took over the second most important post in Colombian politics from his predecessor Antanas Mockus . His term of office ran until the end of 2007.

Since his election, opinion polls show that Garzón has been very popular with the Bogotá population. Many residents are proud to have re-elected Garzón, a mayor who does not belong to either of the two traditional parties (liberals and conservatives). The largest local political challenges in Garzón's tenure were the reintegration of former paramilitaries of the AUC , which are almost all located in the capital, expansion of the TransMilenio -Bussystems and dealing with the public space and there in the informal economy working people. Despite his opposition to the politics of the state government, Garzón's cooperation with it was relatively problem-free and pragmatic. However, there were conflicts over some issues such as the building of hostels for the ex-paramilitaries.

Garzón had laid down the main goals of his term of office in the urban development plan “Bogotá sin indiferencia” ( Spanish: Bogotá without indifference ). Unlike his predecessor, he focused on improving the living conditions of the poorer sections of the population. His program “Bogotá sin hambre” ( Spanish: Bogotá without hunger ) showed initial success. Another goal of his government was to improve the opportunities for political participation for the poorer population at the local level.

At the end of 2005, Garzón came into conflict with his party, the PDI. He called for a new tax to be introduced to finance infrastructure and development projects. A large part of the PDI MPs in the city council opposed this demand, pointing out that Garzón had promised during the election campaign not to introduce any new taxes. In the vote on September 29, 2005, Garzón achieved, with the support of the former mayor Enrique Peñalosa and his supporters with 24 to 20 votes, that the tax was introduced.

2006 presidential elections

After his failed presidential candidacy in 2002, Garzón announced that he was interested in running again. In order to be able to run in the 2006 election, he would have had to give up his mayor's office at the beginning of 2005, so he did not run.

Negotiations with the FARC

On August 27, 2012, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced that Garzón would be involved in the peace negotiations with the FARC guerrilla movement as a negotiator and that he would be appointed minister. The talks are due to begin on October 5th in Oslo .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ex-Mayor of Bogotá negotiates with FARC guerrillas