Paloma Valencia (C) with Paola Holguin (L) and Maria Fernanda Cabal
The far-right Democratic Center party elected senator Paloma Valencia as their candidate in Colombia’2026 presidential election.
Valencia beat her colleagues, Maria Fernanda Cabal and Paola Holguin, in two separate polls that the party surveyed.
In a public survey, the presidential candidate won 17% of the vote, Cabal 11%, and Holguin 8%. The majority of the voters, around 64% answered that they didn’t know or didn’t care.
Among party members, 45% voted for Valencia, 35% for Cabal, 16% for Holguin. Two percent of the members were undecided
The party released the details of the polls after Cabal asked for transparency.
For the sake of transparency required by democracy, the audit must be made public. Every Colombian should be able to know that this was done properly and that each step was worthy of the country we want to rescue.
Maria Fernanda Cabal
The party has been struggling to come up with a presidential candidate since before the party’s favorite, Senator Miguel Uribe, was fatally shot in June.
The late senator’s father, who is also called Miguel Uribe, replaced his son, but was ejected from the party because he “thought he was the boss,” according to other party members.
The Democratic Center spiraled further down when former President Alvaro Uribe, the founder and undisputed leader of the party, was sentenced on fraud and bribery charges by a lower court.
Uribe was subsequently acquitted by an appeals court, but is facing multiple other investigations into his role in the creation of paramilitary groups, multiple massacres and the murder of two human rights lawyers in the 1990’s.
The presidential candidate is the granddaughter of former President Guillermo Valencia (1962-1966).
Valencia has been a senator since 2014, representing the Democratic Center since it entered Congress to defend Uribe’s legacy.
According to a recent poll, the Democratic Center candidate can count on the support of only 1.1% of the voters.
The internal tensions of the party seem to have crippled Valencia’s chances of winning the presidency.
