Colombia fears 'hurricane of violence' after attack on presidential candidate

"The death of a political leader can generate a hurricane of violence," warned Colombian President Gustavo Petro in a speech on Saturday, June 7. Hours earlier, hard-right senator Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot and wounded during a rally in the capital, Bogota. His prognosis is, at this time, guarded, according to the progressive newspaper El Espectador. Three other people were also affected, but are out of danger, according to the magazine Semana .

“My sympathy goes out to the Uribe family and the Turbay family. I don't know how to ease their pain. It is the pain of a lost mother and of the homeland,” said the country's top left-wing representative before the senator underwent surgery, as the country slowly enters a tense electoral climate ahead of the 2026 presidential elections.

"No resources should be spared, not a single peso, not a single moment to devote to the search for the intellectual culprit [...] wherever he lives, whether in Colombia or abroad," he added, while recalling that he must also guarantee the rights of a minor captured during the pursuit.

Paradoxically, Miguel Uribe Turbay was giving a speech in defense of citizens being armed in Colombia, a country plunged for more than a century into a war between soldiers, guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug traffickers, according to what can be heard in a video published by the magazine Cambio and captured at the time of the attack.

His mother, Diana Turbay, was a famous television presenter who was murdered in captivity by the Medellin cartel in a tragic episode that captivated the country in 1991, recalls the independent media Las2Orillas.

“On the afternoon of Saturday, June 7, 2025, the country saw a ghost return: that of political violence at the beginning of a long presidential campaign […] This time, the victim was Miguel Uribe, 39 years old, now a senator and pre-candidate for the presidency for the Democratic Center,” thunders the political site La Silla Vacía , centrist but frontally opposed to President Petro.

La Silla Vacía denounces the government's "radicalization strategy" in the elections, while Petro has called for strikes and demonstrations against what he considers a blockage by the legislative branch, which is drowning out many of his reform proposals.

It is difficult to prove him wrong, given Colombia's long history of murders, massacres and even an "extermination" - according to the Prosecutor's Office - of left-wing politicians committed by right-wing paramilitaries allied with state agents between 1984 and 2016, the year the historic peace agreement was signed between the state and the powerful left-wing guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Miguel Uribe Turbay's political mentor, the powerful former president Álvaro Uribe, called for " citizens to reflect" after the attack against "a hope of the homeland." This comes at a time when the strengthening of illegal groups—particularly FARC dissidents—in remote areas of the country is undermining the president's policy of "total peace."