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Former hostages now on ballot in Colombia [BC-COLOMBIA:MI]
(Miami Herald (FL) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) BOGOTA _ When Clara Rojas emerged from her six-year kidnapping by leftist rebels, the last thing she thought of was getting back into politics.
She concentrated instead on reuniting with her son Emmanuel _ snatched from her shortly after she gave birth in the jungle _ and with her aging mother.
But two years after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia released her, Rojas and six other former political hostages have plunged head first into politics, running for seats in Sunday's congressional elections.
Rojas, who was campaign manager of then presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt when the two were kidnapped in 2002, says she decided to run for a Senate seat in part to put the trauma of her kidnapping behind her.
"I wanted to leave behind the role of victim, and to see what I can do to contribute to the country."
Absent from the race is Betancourt, who many had speculated would make her political comeback in this year's elections after being rescued along with 14 other hostages in a military intelligence operation in 2008. She is reportedly living between New York and Paris, writing a book about her ordeals.
Colombia, which continues mired in a four-decade-old internal conflict, will elect 102 senators and 166 representatives Sunday. The Conservative Party and Green Party candidates will be defined Sunday in open primaries.
The former hostages are living proof of the dangers of doing politics in Colombia, and though election observers said the risk of election violence has dropped, the FARC and paramilitary groups post a latent threat in nearly 40 percent of the country. In February, five people died when the FARC apparently tried to kidnap a gubernatorial candidate in far-flung Guaviare province. And the army said it had foiled a bomb attack last weekend on Orlando Beltran, a former FARC hostage who is seeking to reclaim his seat in the House of Representatives as an independent.
"I've just emerged from seven years of torture in the jungles of Colombia and now they want to kill me," he told local radio.
Security was one of the reasons Luis Eladio Perez, who was a senator in the Liberal Party when he was kidnapped in 2001, flatly rejected the thought of ever returning to politics when he was released in February 2008. "But as time went by I understood that I had to participate in politics to try to help end the conflict in this country," he said. Perez is running for senator as an independent.
Like most of the former hostages, Perez says his experience in captivity made him more attuned to the needs of Colombian voters and better prepared him to represent them.
"Having understood the other reality of the country has made me more sensitive to the drama that millions of Colombians live."
Sigifredo Lopez was the sole survivor of 12 regional lawmakers kidnapped in a bold FARC raid in 2002 on Cali's provincial assembly. His colleagues were killed by their captors in 2007.
"If God kept me alive it was for a reason," he said. "I believe that reason is to contribute to reconciliation in this country."
Lopez is running for the Senate as a Liberal Party candidate.
"I know how the actors think, on all sides. I understand the interests that are in play," he said.
Beatriz Gil, a political analyst with the Congreso Visible congressional watchdog group, says the former hostages could have a good showing because Colombian voters are often moved by emotions.
"People remember them from the live television coverage of their releases. The votes they get will most likely be emotional votes," she said.
Perez says he has not used the "kidnap card" in his campaign, though at rallies people often ask him for details of what it was like to live in the jungle all those years.
"I want people to vote for me out of conviction, not compassion," he said.
(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)
Former lawmaker Jorge Eduardo Gechem, who spent six years in the hands of the FARC before being released in 2008, decided to remind voters of his condition as a former hostage.
The slogan of his campaign for the House of Representatives for the pro-Uribe "U" Party: "If I got out, Colombia can too." Many of the former hostages said they would work especially to help secure the release of the remaining 24 hostages the FARC consider "swappable" prisoners to be used as bargaining chips with the government. The FARC had announced last April it would free two of the men but stalling by both the FARC and the government has delayed the releases.
Gustavo Moncayo, father of one of those to be released, a schoolteacher turned anti-kidnapping campaigner, is running for the Senate for the center-left Polo Democratico Party. But since the FARC announced this week that the releases were imminent, Moncayo has spent the last days of his campaign paying more attention to his son's pending liberation that to collecting votes.
"I am convinced that the release of my son," he said, "is closer every day."
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(c) 2010, The Miami Herald.
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Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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