New Colombia President Duque promises to unite divided nation
BOGOTA: Colombia’s President-elect Ivan Duque was sworn in to office on Tuesday, pledging to unite a divided nation behind his plan to toughen a peace accord with Marxist rebels and rekindle economic growth.
Right-wing Duque, who replaces Nobel Prize winner Juan Manuel Santos, faces significant challenges.
The economy remains weak, a new wave of drug trafficking gangs have moved into areas once controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) guerrillas, and nearly a million Venezuelan migrants have crossed into Colombia looking for food and work.
The 42-year-old lawyer and former senator for the Democratic Center party won a decisive victory against a leftist opponent in June’s election, promising to make adjustments to the domestically-controversial peace accord with the Farc, cut corporate taxes and redouble security efforts in certain areas.
“I want to govern Colombia with unbreakable values and principles, overcoming left and right divisions,” Duque said in an address before dignitaries, after receiving the presidential sash in Bogota’s Plaza Bolivar. “I want to govern Colombia with the spirit of building, never of destroying.”
Ongoing peace negotiations with National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels, the country’s last remaining insurgent group, will be evaluated over the next 30 days, Duque said, adding that any process must be “credible” and based on an end to guerrilla criminal activity over a specified timeframe.
He said he will also send an anticorruption bill to Congress and launch measures to reactivate the sluggish economy.
Duque is a protege of hardline expresident Alvaro Uribe, a harsh critic of the peace agreement, whose father was killed by rebels.
Uribe, facing allegations of witness tampering and bribery that he has denied, is seen by many as the power behind the relatively inexperienced Duque.
But Duque, a father of three who worked at the Inter-american Development Bank before Uribe asked him to take a Senate seat in 2014, has already shown independence in some cabinet picks and in a softening of his anti-accord rhetoric.
Duque can count on continued support from the United States, said Nikki Haley, US Ambassador to the United Nations, in Bogota.