Resignations plague Colombia’s presidential elections

The past weeks have been a step in the wrong direction for Colombian democracy.  Political advisers for both the Santos and Zuluaga campaigns have been forced to resign due to accusations of espionage, sabotage, and the acceptance of bribes.

With the election just five days away, the swirling accusations have diverted the Colombian media’s coverage and the public’s attention from the actual policy issues at hand to the controversy surrounding both of the major candidate’s campaigns.

Most of the accusations have emerged in relation to the ongoing peace talks between the Santos administration and FARC negotiators who are attempting to gain fuller participatory rights in Colombian democracy in exchange for giving up their military aims.

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While the Santos campaign is the most prominent proponent of the negotiations, the Zuluaga campaign has consistently stood in firm opposition to ever brokering a peace deal with the entity, which they still consider to be a terrorist organization.

In the Santos camp, the accusations revolved around one of the candidate’s main political advisers, Juan José Rendón, who was accused of accepting over $12 million in bribes from drug lords and traffickers in exchange for not being extradited to the U.S. upon their surrender.

Just a day after these allegations emerged, the Zuluaga camp was hit with a crisis of its own: Andrés Sepúlveda, a social media team member for the campaign, was accused of covertly and illegally acquiring information about FARC negotiations in order to attempt to disrupt the ongoing peace talks.

Both allegations resulted in major players resigning from both campaigns. Rendón resigned last week as criticism only continued to mount over the supposed acceptance of bribes, while Zuluaga’s campaign chief, Luís Alfonso Hoyos, resigned after it was revealed that he had corresponded and worked with Sepúlveda in their attempt to sabotage the FARC negotiations.