How Ivan Cepeda emerged a frontrunner in Colombia’s presidential election
Bogota, Colombia – He had the look of a middle-aged schoolteacher. His back seemed slightly sloped, a grey cardigan hung from his shoulders, and a
Bogota, Colombia – He had the look of a middle-aged schoolteacher. His back seemed slightly sloped, a grey cardigan hung from his shoulders, and a pair of glasses were perched atop his nose. But as Ivan Cepeda waded through the crowds at a surprise rally on June 3 in downtown Bogota, young supporters thronged to see him. "Se vive, se siente, Cepeda presidente!" they chanted.
"We live it, we feel it, Cepeda for president!" Reserved and measured in his rhetoric, the 63-year-old senator may seem an unlikely candidate for Colombia’s highest office. But since he announced his candidacy in August last year, Cepeda has emerged as the new face of Colombia's increasingly powerful left wing. “Cepeda is a candidate who never set out to become president,” said Leon Valencia, a political analyst and author of the biography, Ivan Cepeda: A Life Against Forgetting.
Observers have pointed to comments Cepeda made less than a year ago, expressing ambivalence about running for the presidency. "Unlike others, this has not been my calling," Cepeda told the newspaper El Espectador in July, as rumours about his candidacy swirled. "I hadn't thought about running
for president because I respect the office and recognise it as a massive responsibility." But Cepeda’s presidential bid is the latest turn in a life defined by politics and violence, placing him in the middle of one of Colombia's most intractable problems: its si decade-long armed conflict.
The BriefWire