Andean Group - August 2011 (ISSN 1741-4466)

A year ago, as President Juan Manuel Santos was about to be sworn in, Colombians worried about the future of their country, especially the legacy of President Alvaro Uribe, whose historic two-term mandate had given the majority of the population hope for a better future. Colombians feared that while Santos was touted as Uribe’s ‘heir’ and the next best thing to not having Uribe himself in power, he may prove to be unable to continue with hard-line Uribismo as most of the electorate wanted. However, Santos’s pragmatic breaks with Uribe’s line on specific issues - such as the handling of foreign affairs and the law to redress victims of the conflict- and his conciliatory approach towards including other political parties in his ‘government of national unity’ have played in his favour; in a recently released Ipsos-Napoleón Franco poll, 71% of respondents rated his first year in power favourably.

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