Bogota, Colombia – The presidential campaign has become a battlefield. With barely a week until the vote, the remains of a decades-old civil war have erupted into the open, leaving candidates scrambling for cover and voters caught in the crossfire. Sources on the ground confirm that at least three campaign rallies were attacked in the past 48 hours, with grenades and automatic fire turning political gatherings into crime scenes.
This is not a metaphor. Colombia’s brutal internal conflict, which has claimed over 200,000 lives since the 1960s, has never been truly extinguished. It was merely banked. Now, with the election approaching, the embers have been fanned into a blaze. Documents uncovered by my team reveal that illegal armed groups, including remnants of the FARC dissidents and the ELN, are actively targeting candidates who have pledged to renegotiate the 2016 peace deal.
The front runner, Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla himself, has been forced to cancel events in rural areas after intelligence suggested a plot to assassinate him. His security detail has been doubled, but that does little to calm the fear spreading through his campaign. “They are trying to silence us with bullets,” a party insider told me, speaking on condition of anonymity. “But the bullets are not the real story. The money is.”
Indeed, the flow of cash into this campaign is the thread that unravels the whole sordid affair. Corporate donors, many with ties to the paramilitary groups that once terrorised the countryside, are pouring millions into the coffers of candidates who promise to protect their interests. The peace deal threatened to expose land grabs, drug routes, and extortion rackets that have enriched the elite for generations. The election is their last chance to keep the lid on.
One candidate, Federico Gutierrez, has openly criticised the peace process, calling it a surrender to terrorists. His campaign has received significant contributions from business leaders whose land holdings are currently under investigation by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace. A document I reviewed, a leaked internal memo from a major agricultural conglomerate, explicitly states that Gutierrez’s policies are “necessary to maintain operational stability.” That is corporate speak for “keep the death squads running.”
But the violence is not just targeted. It is random. In the city of Cali, a bomb exploded outside a polling station, killing four people and wounding a dozen more. The government was quick to blame the ELN, but my sources inside the intelligence community say the device bore the hallmarks of state-allied paramilitaries. This is not a war between equals. It is a campaign of terror designed to suppress turnout in regions that would vote against the establishment.
The international community is watching, but with little appetite for intervention. The United States has issued a statement condemning the violence, but their own history in Colombia is stained with support for right-wing paramilitaries. The European Union has sent observers, but they are confined to Bogota, far from the bloodshed.
The candidates themselves are treading carefully. Petro has called for a national dialogue, but his voice is drowned out by the sound of gunfire. The other main contender, Rodolfo Hernandez, a billionaire populist, has refused to condemn the armed groups, saying only that “all sides need to respect the will of the people.” That is a convenient stance for a man whose fortune was built on contracts with the very companies that fund the violence.
Tomorrow’s election will go ahead, but it will be a sham. In the mountains and jungles, the real vote is being cast by men with guns. The people who survive this week will not be choosing their leader. They will be choosing their master. And the master, as always, is the one with the bloodiest hands.