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Development: On 1 December vice-president David Waisman ruled himself out of the running for the presidential candidacy for the ruling party Perú Posible. Elections are due on 9 April 2006.

Significance: Waisman seemed to be the man for the job and gave every indication of wanting it when he deputised for President Alejandro Toledo during some of his trips abroad. However, he decided that his quadruple bypass would not stand up to the rigours of campaigning. The PP is the only party of any substance yet to name a candidate for the elections although the unpopularity of Toledo will present its candidate with an uphill task. The PP did announce, however, that it had ended its alliance with the Frente Independiente Moralizador (FIM). The alliance with the FIM cost Toledo some of his popular support, not least because of his personal friendship with Fernando Olivera, the loose cannon who leads the party.

The removal of Waisman could clear the way for Carlos Bruce, a popular former minister. The PP leadership, however, is considering running behind an independent candidate. Two names are being mentioned: Alberto Borea, the president of Fuerza Democrática, and Máximo San Román, who last week split from República por Avanza Paí­s. Interestingly, San Román, a former vice-president who served under Alberto Fujimori until 1992, withdrew his candidacy for Avanza Paí­s following a decision by party leader Pedro Cenas to include Antauro Humala on the list to stand in primary elections. Antauro Humala led an assault on a police station in Andahuaylas on 1 January this year. He is currently being tried for murder: four policemen died during the Andahuaylas rebellion. Antauro is also the brother of Ollanta who is surging up the polls for the Partido Nacionalista Peruano.

Development: Venezuela's vice president, José Vicente Rangel, said on 14 January, that the US ban on the sale of US technology used in 12 transport aircraft Venezuela wants to buy from Spain was aggressive.

Significance: It seems that Venezuela and Spain can switch from the US systems in the aircraft to European made ones, negating the effect of the US ban. Rangel added that he understood that the US was also trying to prevent Brazil supplying 24 Supertucano patrol aircraft, made by Embraer, with US-made engines. Presumably, other engines can be used in these aircraft.

Brazil's foreign minister, Celso Amorim, who was telephoned on 12 January by the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to lobby for support for the US position at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over Iran, seems to be coming off the fence on the Supertucanos. Early last week he was making inconclusive statements about US pressure on Brazil to cancel the deal. On 13 January, Amorim said "a ban by the US would be counterproductive."

The US refusal to licence its technology for the transport planes, built by EADS-CASA was on the grounds that that the technology transfers would not accord with US foreign policy interests. The US Defense Department, which issued the ban, said that the sale of the military equipment would contribute to a destabilisation of Latin America.

Development: Marta Sahagún, the wife of President Fox, denied on 19 February, that her charity, Vamos México, had ever taken money from Kamel Nacif, a businessman at the centre of a scandal involving the governor of Puebla, Mario Marín . 

Significance: Sahagún's declaration came after Patricia Mercado Castro, one of the minor party candidates for the presidency, and the journalist at the centre of the scandal, Lydia Cacho, accused Vamos México of taking money from Nacif. On 14 February a tape of Nacif and Marín apparently plotting to throw an investigative journalist into jail was published causing a major scandal and great embarrassment to Marín 's Partido Revolucionario Institucional. The PRI claims that the Nacif tape emerged to distract public attention from the next phase of congressional investigation into corruption allegations involving Sahagún's children, the Bribiesca boys.

The PRI candidate for the presidency, Roberto Madrazo, appears to have managed both to distance himself from Marín , by supporting the idea that the supreme court should investigate the whole affair, without falling out with Marín . On 19 February, Marín 's spokesman said that Marín did not regard Madrazo's endorsement of a supreme court investigation as an abandonment of Marín . 

The original scandal involved Cacho's investigation of a child prostitution ring in Cancún. On the tape, Nacif was heard promising Marín a reward if Cacho was thrown into jail and then making plans for her to be raped once she was in jail. Cacho was jailed, temporarily, in December. The core of her allegation is that Nacif, a prominent textile magnate, was involved with the child prostitution ring organised by Jean Succar Kuri, who is in jail in Arizona, fighting extradition to Mexico to answer the charges.

Development: The constitutional court ruled on 22 March that the fiscal reform bill approved by the legislative assembly on 16 February, after having been mired there for three years, was unconstitutional.

Significance: The ruling is a blow to newly-elected President Oscar Arias. He said that Costa Rica's needy would suffer the most and classed the ruling as a victory for irresponsible demagogues. The ruling will have implications beyond alleviating poverty in Costa Rica, however. The government saw the fiscal reform bill as a prerequisite for signing up to DR-Cafta (the free-trade deal with the US, the Dominican Republic and five Central American countries) which Arias favours and which Costa Rica stands alone in not having ratified.

Interestingly, Arias contributed an opinion piece to "The Miami Herald" on 22 March in which he argued that Latin American governments had not deserted "the Washington Consensus of free markets and fiscal discipline" and decided to "revert to protectionism, state ownership of industries and unlimited social spending." He said that the election of his Partido Liberación Nacional showed that Costa Rica "didn't get the message that all of Latin America is veering to the old-line left" and that "the truth is, neither did most countries in the region." He said he believed in a more globally integrated economy. "I expect that Costa Rica will soon reaffirm its dedication to open markets by ratifying the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement with the United States, which the six other signatory nations have already approved," he said.

Development: The central bank's monetary committee (Copom) published the minutes of its last meeting on 27 April which stated that cuts on the basic interest-rate (Selic) will be “more parsimonious" from now on. 

Significance: The tone used by the Copom changed the expectations of the market and caused evident discomfort in the government. The general expectation had been that the committee would continue to cut interest rates at a faster pace. The Copom slashed the basic interest-rate from 16.5% to 15.75% annually on 19 April, the lowest rate in five years. Yet there is still pressure for the committee to be more “aggressive" on its cuts. Business associations are calling for a full percentage point cut next month. 

The new finance minister, Guido Mantega, seems to disagree with the committee's conjecture preaching austerity in order to not contaminate the inflation target for next year. In talks with journalists Mantega presented a different “interpretation" of the meeting's minutes, saying that the Selic would continue to fall. He said that the central bank “always takes a cautious stand" and once again forecast economic growth of 4.5% in 2006. Before taking up his new job, Mantega was a vocal critic of the Copom's monetary policy, which he blamed for sluggish growth.

Development: Economists estimate that recent policies adopted by the government will inject as much as R$28bn (US$12.44bn) into the Brazilian economy by the time the general elections are held in October.

Significance: The study conducted by LCA Consultores and the trade-union-linked Dieese was based on calculations which took into account the R$50 (US$22.2) increase in the minimum wage recently approved by President Lula da Silva. Economists also considered the agreed 8% discount in personal tax, the reduction in the tax on industrialised products (IPI) for building materials and a 10% increase in the salary of federal civil servants.

Economists believe the impact of the extra resources will start to be felt in the economy as early as next month when electoral campaigning will start to heat up. According to the LCA's chief-economist, Luis Suzigan, if the elections depended only on Brazil's economic performance Lula would be re-elected. Suzigan reckons that Lula's main campaign banner will be growing employment and higher wages, the two areas where his government's economic policies distinguish most clearly in relation to the previous government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

Lula adopted the conservative economic policies of his predecessor, but while Lula has managed to reduce unemployment and increase incomes, Cardoso's government was characterised by successive international crisis that undermined Brazil's economic performance. Political analysts believe that voters will not remember the unfavourable international situation faced by Cardoso.

Development: On 6 July eight opposition presidential candidates signed up to participate in primaries to be held on 13 August by Súmate, the opposition citizens' rights group.

Significance: Of the three frontrunners for the presidency, only two signed up. The most notable absentee was Teodoro Petkoff, former guerrilla, planning minister and currently editor of a Caracas evening newspaper, who had long been critical of Súmate's involvement in the process. It is also unclear how many other candidates will stand; estimates range from 17 to 38, with the concern for the opposition being that the more numerous the anti-government candidates, the more the opposition's share of the vote will be split.

William Ojeda, Vicente Brito, Froilán Barrios, Enrique Tejera Paris, Cecilia Sosa and Sergio Calderón were the six second-tier candidates who signed up. The two who have a real chance of victory are Julio Borges, candidate of the centre-right Primero Justicia party, and Manuel Rosales, the governor of the western state of Zulia. Both the frontrunners were represented by officials from their campaign teams.

Only two candidates (Vicente Brito and Froilán Barrios) endorsed Súmate's conditions for the primaries, the rest refused and submitted a joint document with modified proposals instead. This is another example of the difficulty the opposition has had in finding common ground: Súmate's leadership had said it would not hold the primaries because none of the candidates had signed up by its self-appointed deadline of six weeks before 6 August.

Development: On 13 August judges finished the recount of 9% of the ballot boxes containing votes from the 2 July election.

Significance: Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leftist candidate who lost by 0.58 of a percentage point of the vote to Felipe Calderón, announced a series of protest actions to respond to any result other than one which declares him victor. The country's top electoral court, the TEPJF, has until the end of August to resolve all challenges to the election result. While López Obrador's supporters claim there have been sufficient irregularities in the partial recount to merit opening more ballot boxes, Calderón's team insist their candidate won and the protests must stop.

Over the weekend, López Obrador said that if the TEPJF granted victory to Calderón he would use all measures to prevent an "illegitimate president imposing himself". Speaking in the poor, south-western state of Chiapas, where he travelled to support a gubernatorial candidate for his party, the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), López Obrador said the recount had thrown up "many irregularities". He demanded a full recount. One member of his campaign team, Claudia Sheinbaum, said she would be petitioning the TEPJF to annul the results from 5,000 ballot boxes, where there were irregularities. This would hand victory to López Obrador.

The leftist also promised further demonstrations if Calderón was declared president-elect, and earmarked 1, 15 and 16 September for more protests, in order to disrupt President Vicente Fox's Informe Presidencial (1 September) and Independence Day (15 September). On 12 August, his supporters repeated their tactic of taking over motorway toll booths, allowing motorists to go through without paying in the central state of Puebla, the northern state of Nuevo León and the southern state of Guerrero, as well as the main roads into Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey.

Meanwhile, violence continued in the south of the country over the weekend. On 11 August four hooded men killed two peasants in Guerrero, while in the south-eastern state of Quintana Roo, unknown attackers threw fragmentation grenades into the offices of the prosecutor general. In Oaxaca, where a teachers' strike, combined with a movement to kick out the governor, has entered its third month, thousands gathered to demonstrate against the shooting of a protester.

Development: The attorney general, Mario Iguarán, apologised on 16 September after it emerged that he had given a psychic full access to the inner workings of his department.

Significance: The attorney general and his 18,000-strong department have suffered a major blow to their credibility after a mind-reader called Armando Martí­ started leaking secret information to the press. Iguarán has employed Martí­ since he was appointed attorney general just over a year ago, treating the psychic as a confidante within the department.

In a lengthy interview which Martí­ gave to the latest edition of the weekly magazine Semana, the psychic revealed that Iguarán brought him in to address the manifold divisions within the department of the attorney general. As a result Martí­ interviewed countless members of staff and received access to their personal files in order to assess their state of mind and their loyalty to Iguarán. Martí­ also acted as a hypnotherapist to the attorney general and counselled Iguarán with regards his social life.

Martí­ says that it was upon his recommendation that Iguarán sacked his chief investigator Jaime López in January. The psychic said that his work made him enemies within the department, prompting Iguarán to give him an armoured car, a gun, and a body guard to protect himself. Martí­ said he lost these privileges when he started to investigate Iguarán's deputy Jorge Armando Otálora, whom he accuses of alerting the press to the psychic's work in the department.

Both Martí­ and Iguarán claim they are victims of a conspiracy: the psychic reckons there is a campaign against him within the department while the attorney general believes he is the target of external forces. Given that his department was integral to a purge earlier this year of the secret police, is leading an investigation into the massacre of ten policemen by the army in May, and is also set to play a key role in the paramilitary peace process, Iguarán's list of potential enemies will be lengthy.

Development: President Lula da Silva increased his lead on his rival in the run-off presidential vote, the social democrat Geraldo Alckmin, according to the latest opinion poll published on 22 October. 

Significance: According to an Ibope survey, Lula has 57% of voter intentions to Alckmin's 36%. Taking into account only the valid votes (all the votes minus the ones defaced or left blank by discontented Brazilians, who are all compelled to vote) Lula's advantage stretches to 24 percentage points. In the previous Ibope poll, published two weeks ago, Lula had 52% of voter intentions to Alckmin's 40%. The Ibope survey seems to confirm the findings of two other polls, published by DataFolha and Vox Populi, which also showed Lula's campaign gaining strength. 

The over 20 point gap between Lula and Alckmin revealed in the three polls may represent as many as 20m voters. This means Lula has managed to shift middle class voters who preferred Alckmin in the first round on 1 October. For political analysts the numbers show that Lula has successfully made voters believe that corruption afflicts the whole of the Brazilian political spectrum and that there is “no solution" to the problem. They also say that Lula's has managed to market himself successfully as “the president of the poor". 

Despite Lula's significant advantage, pollsters are reluctant to say his victory in the run-off is certain. According to analysts, the polls “show a snapshot of reality" and that this picture can “change fast". Indeed, Lula appeared in all opinion polls prior to the first round vote as the clear winner, over 15 points ahead of Alckmin. That picture changed just before the vote due to new wrongdoing allegations involving members of his Partido dos Trabalhadores, allowing Alckmin to close that gap and finish only 7 points behind Lula.

Development: Cuban president Fidel Castro was absent from the opening event for his birthday celebrations, held on 28 November, instead sending a message to guests in the Karl Marx theatre to say that he was "not in a fit condition" to attend.

Significance: The official eightieth birthday celebrations for Castro, to be held on 2 December to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the landing of the Granma in Cuba, are much anticipated. Cuban officials have billed the occasion as a return to the public stage for Castro, who was last seen in person on 26 July. A non-appearance from Castro would lend credence to US claims that his illness is more serious than the Cuban government is letting on.

Although officials close to Castro have insisted that his health is constantly improving, members of his inner circle have recently shown signs of backtracking on their earlier certainty that he would attend the postponed birthday celebrations. Foreign minister Felipe Pérez Roque and national assembly president Ricardo Alarcón have both recently implied that Castro's attendance is doubtful.

In the message, which was read out to 5,000 guests at the Karl Marx theatre, Castro did not give any indication that he would attend any of the other events planned over the next week. He apologised for his absence and explained that "I am not in a fit condition, according to my doctors, to face such a huge crowd". Considering the scale of the other celebrations planned to mark the occasion, which include a march of several thousand people and the biggest military parade to be held in Cuba for over a decade, it seems increasingly unlikely that Castro will be well enough to attend the events held in his honour.

Development: On 11 January the outgoing Ecuadorean foreign minister, Francisco Carrión, expressed his concern that the agreement reached between President-elect Rafael Correa and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe over aerial fumigations was a “backwards step".

Significance: On the sidelines of the investiture of Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega, the two men agreed a deal under which Ecuador would be notified of any spraying along the border, Correa said. They also agreed to create a three-party commission, with representatives from both countries and a third from the Organization of American States (OAS), that would ensure that the spray does not enter Ecuadorean territory. Carrión complained there was no text of the agreement and that Ecuador's request to stop the fumigations should go through the United Nations, not the OAS.

“When there are formal agreements between the two countries these things need to be written down," Carrión said. The foreign minister insisted that the current government's position remained that there should be no spraying of glysophate within a 10 km strip of the border. He also said that the study to investigate the effects of the herbicide used to destroy coca crops should be carried out by the UN. “We already know what the position of the OAS is; Cicad (the drug abuse control commission), a part of the OAS, thinks glysophate is harmless."

Development: On 18 February the government approved a decree which will allow the state to take over any part of the food supply chain accused of selling products at a price above that set by the government.

Significance: The decree states: “all of the assets necessary to develop the activities of production, fabrication, import, storage, transport, distribution and commercialisation of foodstuffs and products subject to price controls are declared of public utility and social interest." The government can now take over any facility in the chain of production, distribution and delivery of any products subject to price controls. The products themselves can also be confiscated at will. At present around 150 food staples are subject to price controls, but the government can add products to this list as it sees fit. 

This is the first law to be issued according to the terms of the enabling act, which allows President Hugo Chávez to govern by decree without reference to congress. Its purpose is to prevent the shortages of food staples that the government believes is being caused by “speculation" and “hoarding". In reality, inflation in January reached 2%, while the food sub-index registered a 4% increase in the month, meaning many wholesalers are not willing to sell food at below the price it cost to produce. 

Separately, on 20 February Argentine President Néstor Kirchner is due to arrive in Venezuela to sign various agreements with Chávez relating to energy and food matters. Kirchner will travel to the Orinoco tarbelt to inspect the operations of Enarsa, the Argentine state-owned oil company. The two presidents are also expected to discuss the construction of the US$20bn oil pipeline, the Gran Gasoducto del Sur, due to run down from Venezuela to Argentina, as well as Venezuelan financing for the Argentine agricultural cooperative Sancor. Since Kirchner took office in May 2003, trade between the two countries has risen from US$100m a year to US$1bn a year in 2006.

Development: The Argentine government reacted angrily on 22 March over criticism made by the president of Petrobras, Sérgio Gabrielli, regarding Argentina's fuel-price policy. 

Significance: The Argentine government requested a formal apology for Gabrielli's comments from the Brazilian embassy in Buenos Aires. According to the Argentine planning minister, Julio de Vido, Gabrielli's comments were “totally inappropriate". De Vido said that “under no circumstances [the Argentine government] will allow the president of a foreign company, in this case a Brazilian state-owned company, to give an opinion about the sovereign politics of Argentina". 

Gabrielli told an audience during an investment meeting in Rio de Janeiro on 20 March that Argentina's fuel-price policy was hampering investment in the energy sector. Petrol and diesel prices have been frozen under a tacit agreement between oil companies and the Argentine government following the 2001-2002 economic crisis. Gabrielli said that the scheme now “needs changes" not least because it is leading to “relative scarcity" of fuel in Argentina as companies are not investing in production.

Gabrielli's comments led the Argentine government to fall short of threatening Petrobras's operations in Argentina. Petrobras acquired the Argentine Perez Companc oil company in 2003 and renamed it Petrobras Energia. According to Gabrielli, his words were “misinterpreted" by the Argentine press and by the government. The Brazilian government has so far not issued any official statement on the matter. To try to calm the situation Petrobras announced it was committed to investing US$2.3bn in Argentina in the next four years.

Development: On 26 April the attorney general, Mario Iguarán, criticised those people and companies who had financed paramilitary organisations.

Significance: The bodies of 57 paramilitary victims have been discovered over the last two weeks. The gruesome nature of their deaths will make it all the harder for President Alvaro Uribe to defend himself against charges of paramilitary collusion when he heads to Washington on 2 May. Speaking after the discovery of the dismembered remains of two teenage brothers, Iguarán said that those who financed paramilitary groups "did not pay for security, but bloodshed".

Iguarán is to travel to Washington next week to meet his (beleaguered) counterpart Alberto Gonzales, officials from the justice department and various congressmen, including Patrick Leahy, a Democrat who has expressed concerns about the human rights situation in Colombia and is the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the US, the fruit company Chiquita has been fined US$25m after admitting financing paramilitaries and the coal mining firm Drummond faces a civil suit on similar charges.

US politicians are starting to take their distance from the Uribe administration. Last week the former vice-president Al Gore refused to share a platform with Uribe because of the accusations about his government's ties to paramilitaries. A Senate committee also suspended US$55m in aid for the same reason. Colombia is the third largest recipient of US military aid in the world.

Development: The Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos said on 3 June that it would investigate an incident in which the army shot dead two women and three children in Sinaloa.

Significance: The deaths illustrate the dangers of using the army as policemen. The Mexican government has been warned, by congress, the UN and Amnesty International, that it risks undermining human rights if it persists in using soldiers as policemen. 

The women and children were killed early on 2 June when the car they were travelling in, apparently, to a funeral, did not stop at military checkpoint. The soldiers opened fire and claimed that the vehicle was carrying both drugs and weapons, though the army has not officially endorsed this claim.

Development: On 9 July the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) issued a statement asking for the International Committee of the Red Cross to oversee the return of the bodies of 11 deputies who were killed while imprisoned by the guerrillas.

Significance: If the guerrilla group refused to hand the bodies over it would not only appear inhumane but would also be accused of withholding the evidence that shows how the deputies were killed. The Farc claims the deputies, who died in June, were caught on the crossfire of a botched rescue mission. The government denies military involvement and has suggested the guerrilla group killed the deputies in cold blood.

If the bodies do indicate that they were killed in a crossfire, the government's tottering credibility would be further shaken. The interior minister, Carlos Holguí­n, responded to the Farc's statement by saying that he did not believe that the Farc intends to hand back the bodies. Holguí­n argued that the Farc will impose conditions before it agrees to a handover, suggesting that the Farc will call for a demilitarised zone where such an operation can take place.

This belief seems to be supported by the Farc's statement, which was signed by its spokesman Raúl Reyes and published on the internet. The statement blamed the "heavy presence of official and unofficial troops" in the area where the deputies were killed for the "undesired delay" in handing over the bodies.

The death of the deputies dealt a heavy blow to the Farc's credibility abroad; the international community was unanimous in saying that the Farc was responsible for the deputies deaths because the group was holding them hostage when they were killed. The Farc's statement was addressed to officials from France, Spain and Switzerland who have previously mediated between the government and the guerrilla group in an attempt to secure Europe's re-engagement.

The greater the international involvement the greater the pressure will be on President Alvaro Uribe to reach a compromise with the Farc over a prisoner swap involving the group's remaining hostages. However, if the Farc doesn't really want to release the deputies' bodies it is playing a risky game by involving the European mediators.

Public pressure for a prisoner swap appears to have diminished following the deputies' deaths due to popular revulsion with the Farc. A poll published by Radio Cadena Nacional on 9 July indicated that 58% of respondents oppose the government acceding to the Farc's demands for a demilitarised zone where an exchange might take place. Before the deputies' violent deaths a majority of Colombians were in favour of such an arrangement.

Development: On 5 August, Carlos de León Bravo, mayoral candidate for the Encuentro por Guatemala (EG) party was murdered.

Significance: De León Bravo was running as mayoral candidate in Santa Catarina municipal elections for the EG, the party of presidential candidate Rigoberta Menchú. The indigenous leader is currently trailing in fourth place in the polls with around 5% of voting intention, the only one of the main candidates to have suffered a decline in support last month.

According to the Mirador Electoral (Election Watch), the recent homicide brings the death toll of political candidates or relatives of leaders up to 40, far higher than the 2003 elections which saw 23 political murders. Last week, the umbrella group warned that the present political campaign has become the most violent campaign since 1985.

The centre-left Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE), currently leading the polls with candidate Alvaro Colom, has been worst affected, with 17 of its political leaders and activists murdered during the campaign period. This is followed by the centre-right Gran Alianza Nacional (GANA) and right-wing Partido Patriota (PP) with five murders each and EG with four murders.

Development: The finance committee in the chamber of deputies agreed on 11 September on the new business tax, the Ietu.

Significance: The tax was backed by the Partido Acción Nacional, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional and the Partido Verde Ecologista de México. This block has a majority in the full congress. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the defeated presidential candidate of the leftwing alliance, headed by the Partido de la Revolución Democrática, called on the Left to stop the measure becoming law by interrupting congressional sessions.

The Impuesto Empresarial a Tasa Unica is designed to bring the informal sector into the tax net. Congress has, however, agreed to pitch the tax at a higher level than the government wanted, so informal businesses might reckon that it is not worth their while to register. The Ietu will start at 16.5% which the government reckons will yield M$100bn (US$8.9bn). The tax rate will increase by half a point a year to hit 17.5% in 2010.

The tax will be levied on all businesses. Conventional businesses will be able to offset the tax against income tax. All businesses can offset their labour costs and transport costs against the Ietu. Congress has not yet agreed on whether to introduce a new tax on retail sales of fuel. Such a tax is likely to push up the inflation rate.

Development: On 11 October, a former minister of justice was sentenced to 24 years in jail for masterminding the killing of a presidential candidate, Luis Carlos Galán, in 1989.

Significance: Galán was killed after declaring war on the drug trade. The minister was Alberto Santofimio Botero, now 63. He was allegedly acting at the behest of Pablo Escobar, a major drug gangster. The allegation is that once Galán was out of the way, Santofimio would himself run in the 1990 elections, as the Liberal candidate, backed by Escobar, and would stop the extradition of drug gangsters to the US.

Three former presidents came to give evidence in Santofimio's trial, which began in 2006. The most telling evidence was delivered by John Jairo Velásquez, alias Popeye, one of Escobar's lieutenants, who said that he had been at the meeting between Santofimio and Escobar in which Santofimio suggested killing Galán. Galán was machine gunned to death as he prepared to speak at a political meeting in Soacha, in the south of Bogotá.