One of the most important politicians in Colombia over the last quarter century, German Vargas Lleras, died this Friday in Bogota after a painful illness that prevented him from participating as a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections to be held in Colombia next May 31.
Although he received a poor vote total in the 2018 elections, many believed that this time, if he had run, he would have been the strongest right-wing option to face left-wing candidate Ivan Cepeda. But his health deteriorated to the point that his public appearances became increasingly sporadic.
With the passing of Vargas Lleras, Colombia loses a politician who, according to the view of different analysts, had the whole country in his head. This because, to begin with, he was a member of one of the country’s most traditional political families, and he was the maternal grandson of former Colombian president Carlos Lleras Restrepo.
But that was not the reason for the merits attributed to him. Because of his intellectual and political abilities, he served as senator of the Republic of Colombia, a position he held through popular election from 1994 to 2008. His acceptance among citizens was proven when he obtained the highest vote total in the country in the 2006 legislative elections.
He was also president of the Senate of the Republic, leader of the Radical Change Party, candidate for the Presidency of the Republic in 2010 and 2018, minister of the Interior and Justice, and minister of Housing, City and Territory. In addition, in 2014, President Juan Manuel Santos chose him as his vice-presidential candidate for the 2014 presidential elections, in which their ticket emerged victorious.
A fierce opponent of Gustavo Petro
In that way, Vargas Lleras served as vice president of Colombia from August 7, 2014 until March 21, 2017, when the Senate accepted his resignation. Such a career turned him into a true statesman who lacked only reaching the country’s highest office.
In any case, he became one of the country’s most listened-to voices because of his experience and ability. Despite his health problems, he adopted a firm position against the left-wing government of Gustavo Petro. And his main platforms were his account on the social network X and an opinion column in the newspaper El Tiempo.
“Today, we Colombians decide; it is time to put an end to this bad government. Violence sponsored by the State, investment paralyzed, healthcare system collapsed, legal uncertainty, rampant corruption, growing deficit and illegal groups growing stronger every day […]”, Vargas Lleras said in one of his messages to the country before last March’s legislative elections.
And in one of his columns in the Bogota newspaper he warned: “The same thing that happened in Chavez and Maduro’s Venezuela, Correa’s Ecuador, Evo’s Bolivia, Ortega’s Nicaragua and, of course, Fidel’s Cuba, could happen here. With the exception of the latter, all of these dictators came to power at the expense of their countries’ democracies and then crushed them. How can one not understand that all of them came to stay? Colombia will see whether it allows it.”
Vargas Lleras’s radical stance was clear, and that spirit was what he instilled in the party he led for several years: Radical Change. Because of his attitude toward leftist guerrilla groups, the former vice president was the victim of two attacks perpetrated by the former FARC: one on December 13, 2002, through the use of a book bomb delivered to his Senate office in 2002, and another involving a car bomb in October 2005 activated as his motorcade passed by.
The first attack left him with serious injuries and he lost several fingers on his left hand, while he emerged unharmed from the second. But that only strengthened his political stance and rejection of authoritarian regimes, whatever their stripe, from those of the right to those derived from the anti-democratic left.
One month before the presidential elections in Colombia, the echo of Vargas Lleras’s voice continues speaking to Colombia.