Conservative presidential candidate Paloma Valencia has chosen economist and former statistics chief Juan Daniel Oviedo as her vice-presidential running mate, a move widely interpreted as an effort by the right-wing Centro Democrático to broaden its appeal beyond its traditional conservative base ahead of Colombia’s May 31 presidential election.

The alliance seeks to balance Valencia’s hard-line security message – closely associated with former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez – with Oviedo’s more technocratic and centrist profile, which resonates with younger, urban voters.

Announcing the ticket in the bustling commercial district of San Victorino in central Bogotá, Valencia said the decision followed consultations within the party and with Uribe himself.

“We have reached the conclusion that the best teammate is Juan Daniel Oviedo,” Valencia said. “He obtained a popular backing that excites all of us. He is connecting with many Colombians who did not feel represented.”

The announcement comes just days before the deadline to register presidential tickets with Colombia’s electoral authorities and follows Valencia’s decisive victory in the conservative primary coalition known as “La Gran Consulta,” where she secured more than three million votes. Oviedo finished second with more than one million, quickly emerging as one of the race’s unexpected political figures.

Balancinga new centre

Valencia, a staunch supporter of Uribe’s political project, has repeatedly signaled she will not distance herself from the former president’s ideological influence.

“I’m not going to distance myself from Uribe; I’m going to die a Uribe supporter,” she said in a recent interview with El País, reaffirming her commitment to the security agenda associated with the former two-term president.

Yet her choice of Oviedo indicates an attempt to broaden the coalition’s reach. The economist, who gained national prominence as director of Colombia’s national statistics agency – DANE – is widely viewed as a highly-skilled data-driven analyst with appeal among educated urban voters in their thirties and forties – many of whom supported the Colombian Peace Agreement.

That demographic has traditionally gravitated toward centrist figures such as former Bogotá mayor Claudia López or the moderate political movement associated with Sergio Fajardo.

Oviedo’s presence on the ticket could help the conservative bloc penetrate that electorate while also tempering some of the party’s more polarizing rhetoric.

Beyond Differences

The partnership did not come easily. According to campaign strategists involved in negotiations, several days of discussions were required to reconcile differences between the candidates – particularly regarding Colombia’s peace process.

The Centro Democrático has long been critical of the transitional justice system created by the 2016 accord, especially the Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz (JEP), which has been investigating war crimes committed by ex-FARC and Armed Forces during two decades of the internal conflict.

Oviedo, however, has publicly supported the peace agreement and defended the need for reconciliation. Speaking after accepting the nomination, Oviedo emphasized the importance of political dialogue despite ideological differences.

“This is about listening,” he said. “In this coalition we are capable of recognizing our differences but uniting around a fundamental purpose: looking toward the future and building a country where everyone fits.”

He also highlighted his intention to include diverse sectors of Colombian society, mentioning farmers, informal workers, women and the LGBT community.

Strategic Moves in Gran San

The announcement’s location – San Victorino’s Gran San commercial center, one of Bogotá’s busiest retail hubs- was also symbolic. The district is a bustling marketplace dominated by small traders and informal workers, a constituency both candidates say they want to court.

Valencia described the alliance as a forward-looking project for a country weary of political polarization.

“We have many pains as a nation,” she said during the event. “If we only look backward we will find wounds that still need healing. But we have another option: to look forward toward the future we deserve.”

She also praised Oviedo’s credentials, describing him as a policymaker who understands the deep structural and social challenges facing Colombia. “He likes numbers, he likes studying,” she said. “Government is not about talking nonsense about problems – it’s about understanding them deeply in order to solve them,” she said to waves of applause.

The announcement quickly triggered reactions from across Colombia’s political landscape.

Former Liberal president Ernesto Samper welcomed the decision, arguing that Oviedo’s acceptance of the vice-presidential role signaled an implicit recognition by the right-wing party of the peace process. “The acceptance of Juan Daniel Oviedo demonstrates that the Centro Democrático validates the Havana peace agreement and the continuation of the JEP,” he Samper.

With the campaign entering its decisive phase, the Valencia-Oviedo ticket represents a strategic attempt to unite two currents within Colombia’s conservative electorate: an older security-focused base loyal to Uribe and a younger urban sector seeking pragmatic solutions to the internal conflict.

Whether the combination can bridge Colombia’s ideological divide – or deepen it- will likely shape the tone of the presidential race in the weeks and moths leading to the decisive vote.

Colombia’s transitional justice system has reached a morally charged milestone. The seven former commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP) guerrilla have formally accepted responsibility for the recruitment of 18,677 minors during the country’s decades-long internal conflict, acknowledging not only the scale of the practice but also the sexual and reproductive abuses that accompanied it.

The admission, submitted to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), marks a shift in tone from earlier, more defensive statements. It comes as the country approaches the tenth anniversary of the 2016 peace agreement, signed between President Juan Manuel Santos and Rodrigo Londoño, and at a moment that has opened a more complex struggle over truth and accountability.

The signatories of the letter are Rodrigo Londoño Echeverry, known by his wartime alias “Timochenko”, along with Pastor Alape Lascarro, Julián Gallo Cubillos, Milton de Jesús Toncel Redondo, Pablo Catatumbo Torres, Rodrigo Granda Escobar and Jaime Alberto Parra Rodríguez.

In a video delivered to the tribunal’s Chamber for Acknowledgment of Truth, the seven former members of the guerrilla’s last Secretariat “ask forgiveness from the victims and society for the recruitment and use of girls and boys,” as well as for “cruel treatment, homicides, sexual, reproductive and prejudice-based violence” inflicted within their ranks.

The language is unusually direct. The tribunal, in turn, has accepted these declarations as “a starting point for designing direct restorative encounters with victims,” emphasizing that the process remains ongoing and conditional. This is not, it insists, “a conclusion but the beginning of a more demanding phase” of recognition.

The figures involved are stark. The JEP has identified 18,677 victims of child recruitment between 1996 and 2016, number that exposes what it calls a “violence that was invisible, even to the state itself.” Prior to the tribunal’s investigation, official records had produced only 387 cases and 45 sentences, five of them acquittals – a gap that hints at the scale of impunity.

The crimes extend far beyond recruitment. The tribunal has organized its findings into five “macro-criminal patterns”: the enlistment of minors, including those under 15; mistreatment, torture and killings within the ranks; sexual violence; reproductive violence, including forced contraception and abortions; and persecution based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Particularly striking is the acknowledgment of reproductive control. The former commanders concede that the imposition of contraceptive methods and the forced termination of pregnancies constituted forms of violence that “violated the dignity and integrity” of those affected – most of them girls and adolescents. Such practices, long alleged by victims, had previously been downplayed or denied.

The JEP’s statement underscores the scale and diversity of those harmed. More than 11,000 victims are formally accredited in Case 07, including some 2,000 individuals and over 9,000 members of Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities. For these groups, the consequences were not merely individual but collective. The recruitment of children, the tribunal notes, “aggravated the risk of physical and cultural extinction” for several communities.

The social geography of the crime is also revealing. Recruitment thrived in peripheral regions where state presence was weak and armed actors exercised de facto authority over vulnerable populations. Children were drawn in through coercion, deception or, in some cases, the promise of protection in violent environments. Once inside, many encountered a regime of discipline and control that blurred the line between indoctrination and abuse.

The tribunal is explicit about the enduring damage. Victims, it says, continue to live with “profound emotional, psychological and physical harm,” often compounded by stigma and exclusion. Many are still reconstructing “their life projects and identities,” a process that has stretched into adulthood.

Crucially, the JEP frames the former commanders’ admission not as an act of closure but as an invitation—to victims and to society. In its words, “this is not a point of arrival, but the beginning of an encounter” between those responsible and those who suffered. Whether that encounter leads to reconciliation or renewed grievance remains uncertain.

Under Colombia’s transitional justice model, such acknowledgments carry legal consequences. Full and truthful admissions can lead to alternative sentences for reparations and restorative measures rather than prison. The tribunal is now assessing whether the former commanders’ statements meet that threshold. Victims, for their part, are being asked to “read, listen and weigh” the declarations and decide what they mean for their own processes.

Early reactions have been met with skepticism and resignation. Some victims’ representatives have described the statements as a “first step toward dialogue,” while noting that they fall short of a complete account.

The broader political context complicates matters. Colombia’s security situation has deteriorated in large swathes of the country, with dissident factions and other armed groups recruiting minors even as the state grapples with the legacy of past conflicts. The JEP itself alludes to this continuity, calling on “society as a whole, including new structures of violence,” to ensure non-repetition.

That appeal highlights the paradox at the heart of Colombia’s peace process. The country has made significant strides in uncovering the truth about past atrocities, yet struggles to prevent their recurrence. Transitional justice, in this sense, is both retrospective and urgently contemporary.

The former FARC leaders, for their part, have pledged to remain on the “dialogical and restorative path” and to participate in encounters with victims. They speak of the “deep and lasting damage” caused by their actions and express willingness to contribute to guarantees of non-repetition. Whether these commitments translate into tangible repair will depend on what follows.

For now, the significance of the moment lies less in what has been resolved than in what has been acknowledged. The recruitment of children – once a peripheral issue in public debates – has been placed at the center of Colombia’s reckoning with its violent past.

As the JEP puts it, recognizing these crimes “enables a broader reflection” on how to ensure that childhood is never again sacrificed to war. It is a sober ambition. Colombia has, at last, begun to confront one of the conflict’s darkest truths. Whether it can fully reckon with it remains an open question.