Colombian President

Álvaro Uribe Vélez
Álvaro Uribe Vélez, born 4 July 1952 in Medellín is the 39th President of Colombia and is currently serving his second term in office.
Before his current role in politics Uribe was a lawyer. He studied law at the University of Antioquia and completed a management course at Harvard University
Uribe started his politics career in his home department of Antioquia. He has held office in the Medellín Public Enterprises (Empresas Públicas de Medellín) and in the Ministry of Labor and in the Civil Aeronautic. Later he held office as the mayor of Medellín in 1982, then he was Senator between 1986 and 1994 and finally Governor of Antioquia between 1995and 1997 before he was elected President of Colombia in 2002.

He was awarded the Simón Bolívar Scholarship of the British Council and was nominated Senior Associate Member at the Saint Antony's College in the University of Oxford after completing his term in office as the governor of Antioquia in 1998.

Uribe's father was killed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas during a 1983 kidnapping attempt.
After his father's death Álvaro Uribe sold most of his inherited rural properties and concentrated on his political career as a member of the Colombian Liberal Party. He served on the Medellín city council between 1984 and 1986
Alvaro Uribe Velez is married to Lina Moreno and have two sons: Tomas (Apr 19, 1.981) and Geronimo (Jul 16, 1.983).
In the 20 May 2.002 presidential election Alvaro Uribe Velez got 5.862.655. votes. (53.048%)

In the 28 May 2.006 presidential election Alvaro Uribe Velez got 7.363.421 votes. (62.20%)

The Colombian armed conflict or Colombian Civil War has existed since approximately 1964 or 1966, which was when the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and later the National Liberation Army (ELN) were founded and subsequently started their guerrilla insurgency campaigns against successive Colombian government administrations.
It originally began as a backlash produced by a previous conflict known as La Violencia, which had been triggered by the 1948 assassination of populist political leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the drug trade, the drug cartels and the War on Drugs increased the intensity of the conflict and involved all of its participants.
In 2004, Uribe's political supporters amended the constitution to allow him to run for a second term, previously proscribed by the Colombian constitution, and his own decision to run for a second term was announced in late 2005. With this amendment, Uribe was re-elected on May 28, 2006 for a second presidential term (2006-2010), and became the first president to be consecutively re-elected in Colombia in over a century. He received about 62% of the vote, consisting of about 7.3 million ballots in his favor.
Lately Uribe´s supporters are planning to amend once again the constitution in order to allow him a new reelection. Uribe neither denies nor confirms his aspirations.
In my humble opinion, Colombians should listen to the words of the Father of the Patria, Simon Bolivar in the speech delivered to the Congress of Angostura on Feb 15, 1.819. In a part of that speech Bolivar said:
...”the continuity of autority in a same person frecuently has been the end of democratic governments. The repeated elections are esencial in the popular systems, because nothing is so dangerous as to allow a citizen remains a long time as governor. People get accustum to obey and he gets accustum to rule. Hence derives the usurpation and the tyranny.A just jealous is the guarantee of the republican freedom and our citizens should be affraid with excessive justice that the same magistrate, who has ruled for a long time, rules them to perpetuity...”

Horacio Idarraga Gil. Horacioidarraga_1@yahoo.es
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvaro_Uribe_Velez