Colombian Presidential Candidate Dies 2 Months After Shooting

Colombian senator and presidential candidate, Miguel Uribe Turbay has died, more than two months after he was shot in the head at a campaign rally in Bogota.

He was 39 years old.

Uribe, a right-wing opposition figure and potential contender in Colombia’s 2026 presidential election, was attacked on June 7 while addressing supporters in the capital.

He had been in hospital ever since, battling for his life but eventually succumbed to the critical injuries.

The Santa Fe de Bogota Foundation, where he had been receiving treatment, said on Saturday that Uribe was in “critical condition” following “a hemorrhagic episode in the central nervous system.”

His wife, Maria Claudia Tarazona, announced his death on Monday in an emotional message, “I ask God to show me the way to learn to live without you.”

Former Colombian president Ivan Duque Marquez (2018–2022), described Uribe’s death as the work of “terrorism,” saying the country had lost “an upright and transparent leader.”

“Colombia mourns, but it will not surrender to the criminals who took the life of an admirable young man,” Duque said.

Another former president, Alvaro Uribe, unrelated to the senator, condemned the killing, “Evil destroys everything; they killed hope. May Miguel’s struggle be a light that illuminates the right path for Colombia.”

Uribe’s death has rekindled painful memories of Colombia’s history of political assassinations as he also came from a powerful political family with a tragic past.

His mother, journalist Diana Turbay, was kidnapped by Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel in 1990 and killed during a botched rescue operation the following year.

Speaking in 2023 at the very site where his mother was murdered, Uribe announced his presidential bid, “I could have grown up seeking revenge, but I decided to do the right thing: forgive, but never forget.”

Raised by his father, a Bogota city councillor, Uribe went on to earn a degree from Harvard University and began his political career in local government before winning a Senate seat in 2022.

His grandfather, Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala, served as Colombia’s president from 1978 to 1982, and his grandmother, Nydia Quintero Turbay de Balcazar, founded Solidarity with Colombia, an organisation that championed workers’ rights.