BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Miguel Uribe, the hopeful colombian conservative president, was in danger Monday after being shot in the head from close range during a weekend rally.
In a statement, the doctor said the 39-year-old senator “barely responded to medical interventions, including brain surgery, following an attempted assassination that had a calm effect on the South American country.
Uribe was shot on Saturday after speaking to a few people gathered at a park in Bogota’s Modelia district.
On Sunday, hundreds of people gathered outside the hospital, where Uribe is treated to pray for his recovery. Some carried the rosary in hand, while others chanted the slogan to President Gustavo Peter.
“This is terrible,” said lawyer Walter Zimenez, who appeared outside the hospital with a sign calling for Peter to be removed. “It feels like we’re back in the 1990s,” he said, referring to a decade when drug cartels and rebel groups exonerate judges, presidential candidates and journalists.
Peter condemned the attack and urged his opponents not to use it for political purposes. However, some Colombians have also asked the president to ease his rhetoric towards opposition leaders.
The assassination attempts surprised the country, and many politicians surprised it as the latest indication of how security has deteriorated in Colombia, where governments struggle to control violence in rural and urban areas despite a peace deal with the country’s largest rebel group in 2016.
The attack on Uribe came in the midst of hostility between Peter and the Senate blocking reforms to the country’s labor laws.
Peter gave fierce speeches calling opposition leaders “oligarchs” and “enemies of the people,” and organized protests in favour of reform.
“There is no way to argue that a president who describes his enemy as people, paramilitary groups, or assassin enemies is not responsible for this,” writes the well-known political analyst Andres Meziah of X.
The Colombian Senate said Monday that it will suspend the session due to undecided days to show solidarity with Uribe. The Senate was scheduled to vote this week for a labor law that the Colombian president would like to enact through a referendum.
Also in a joint statement on Monday, nine opposition parties said they would look at “international entities” that could provide “conditions of equality” to them by the Colombian government. The parties also called on the Commander’s Office to establish a committee that ensures election transparency and security.
The Attorney General said the 15-year-old boy was arrested at the scene of the attack on Uribe. Videos filmed on social media show the shooting of the suspect in Uribe from close range.
The suspect was injured in the foot and had recovered at another clinic, authorities said. Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez added that more than 100 officers are investigating the attack.
On Monday, Colombian Attorney General Luz Adriana Camargo said a Colombian minor faces a sentence of up to eight years in custody for committing murder.
Camargo acknowledged that the tolerant writing encourages armed groups to commit crimes to minors. However, she said Colombian law believes that minors adopted by armed groups are victims and are trying to protect them.
“As a society, we need to look back on why miners are caught up in a network of assassins and what we can do to prevent this from happening in the future,” she said.
Kamargo said authorities had not identified the death threat to Uribe before attempting to assassinate Saturday. However, on Monday, Uribe’s lawyers said they sued the director of the National Protection Division, a government agency that assigns security guards and bullet proof vehicles to politicians and human rights leaders.
Uribe began his presidential campaign in October. His lawyer, Victor Mosquera, said the National Protection Division ignored multiple requests by Uribe to expand details of his security when he campaigned.
“The details of his security had to be improved,” Mosquera said at a press conference. “We need to investigate whether the attack (against Uribe) is the result of negligence.”
In X’s message Monday, Peter wrote that details of Uribe’s security had been “oddly” reduced to three bodyguards on the day of the assassination attempt, and that he asked police to investigate.
Peter said there are still many theories about the motives of the attack.
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