Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, who was held as a hostage for six years by Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, says she will be running for her country’s presidency.
The announcement comes almost two decades after Betancourt was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia while also campaigning for the country’s top office for the Green Oxygen Party, a movement she founded while she was a congresswoman.
Betancourt’s story is well known in Colombia. She spent six years in guerrilla camps deep in the Amazon jungle, where sometimes rebel fighters would tie her to a tree with metal chains to prevent her from escaping. Her proof of life videos, in which she asked officials to investigate the circumstances that led to her own kidnapping, and then pleaded with the government to resume peace talks with the FARC rebels were aired widely in Colombia and abroad.
But she returned to Colombia’s political scene last year as the country prepared for elections that will be held in May. While announcing her run for the presidency Betancourt said she would fight to end impunity for corrupt politicians while addressing economic disparities that have long afflicted Colombia, where protests against inequality shook up local politics last year.
In the primary, Betancourt will have to compete against younger candidates who are less known internationally, but have been more active in Colombian politics in recent years. They include Sen. Juan Manuel Galan, whose father was murdered in the late eighties while running for the presidency and Alejandro Gaviria, a former health minister who helped to implement a government ban on the aerial fumigation of coca crops.
“The main feeling now among voters is one of frustration with a system that does not provide opportunities” Guzman said. “And there are other candidates who have been doing a good job tapping into that feeling.”
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