• Home
• »  Everything Colombia
• » Elections 2010: Celebrity candidates

Elections 2010: Celebrity candidates

By Manuel Rueda, Editorial Director

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

In my last entry I talked about a bullfighter, a watchman, and a Colonel who ran for office and asked people not to vote for him.

I am now making a list of the funniest, oddest, or perhaps most surprising candidates in the upcoming Congressional elections on March 14^th.  Many of them seem to come from Colombian Television shows.

The Naked candidate:

Maria Fernanda Valencia, a 42 year old lawyer and former TV presenter, has promised to pose naked for Soho's mens' magazine if she is elected to the House of Representatives on March 14^th.   Valencia who wants to be elected to the House to defend gender equality and environmental rights, argues that she does not want to become a “sex object” and says she is willing to pose naked in order to show Colombians that politicians in this country need to “reveal their secrets.” 

Valencia, who is running as a Bogota representative on behalf of the pro-government “U Party”, says presidential candidate and U Party leader Juan Manuel Santos backed the publicity stunt, which has enabled her to capture media headlines and “differentiate” herself from dozens  dozen of candidates competing for votes in Bogota.  “Santos” she said, “would rather we take our clothes off than buy votes.

The “Mamacita”

Aura Christina Geithner has posed naked on Soho several times.

The forty year old model and actress has starred in several prime time soap operas and is famous for attending the national beauty contest in Cartagena and publicly saying that none of the contestants “reached her heels.”

Geithner, who recently recorded an album and went on tour with a mariachi group, is now running for Senate on behalf of the Liberal Party.  Her facebook page says she studied international relations and has decided to “go back to her roots” by returning to politics.

“Throughout her career as an actress she has traveled across the national territory always surrounded by her public.” says the Facebook page.  “This closeness with the people has permitted – Geithner -- to have first-hand knowledge of her compatriots necessities.”

The Sports Presenter

Javier Hernandez Bonnet spent the past ten years narrating soccer matches and presenting the sports section in Caracol TV News. 

But the famous sports presenter says he is fed up with the corruption taking place in the Colombian congress  – more than 80 Congressmen and Women are currently under investigation for links with paramilitary groups -- urging people to vote for him so that “politicians stop scoring goals on us.”

Bonnet is running for the Senate and has decided to go with the Conservative party because it believes “in the defense and promotion of families” as the “the principal cell of this society.” 

He says he wants to increase funding for community sports programs and cultural activities in order to keep vulnerable youth off the streets.

DMG - The financial pyramids candidate

The initials DMG are well known throughout Colombia.  They stand for David Murcia Guzman, a businessman who made himself and thousands of others rich by setting up Colombia´s most well known financial pyramid scheme.

DMG was shut down by the government in 2008, as evidence emerged that it was laundering millions of dollars from the cocaine trade, and David Murcia was extradited to the US last year where he was wanted for allegedly collaborating with drug traffickers.

But brother Cristian Murcia is now running for the Senate thanks to an alliance between former members of the company and political party Apertura Liberal, which will also enable members of the DMG group to run for the House of Representatives in most of Colombia´s departments.

Murcia thinks his chances of reaching the Senate are good.  “The DMG family benefited four million people in seven years,” he told lasillavacia.com, “so that means that one of every five Colombian voters is a DMGista.”

Back in 2008, the government´s decision to shut down DMG and arrest its leader on money laundering charges led to massive anti-government protests and riots in southern Colombia as thousands of people there depended on DMG´s generous interest rate payments for their livelihoods.