Juan Manuel Santos Announces Bid For Second Term As Colombian President

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos today announced that he would be running for reelection in Colombia's 2014 presidential race. Santos justified the move by drawing attention to the advances his govenrment has made in the last four years, among them peace negotiations with FARC and the reduction of poverty and unemployment. Colombian elections will take place in May 2014, meaning Santos would govern until 2018.

Juan Manuel Santos promised voters that through his reelection, Colombia would continue its advancement: "We have to finish the work that we started," he stated, saying that Colombia had finally begun to see a "light at the end of the tunnel." Santos proclaimed his decision came about because the leader was "convinced that we have advanced sufficiently and that at last its possible to reach that future of peace and prosperity that all Colombians deserve."

While President Santos was careful to draw attention to his government's many achievements, the Colombian leader referred time and again to work that still needed to be done. "I think that we as Colombians can agree on which is the country we want. That's why we talk, that's why we come together."

"I want to continue leading the great transformations that we have begun. I want to lead a Colombia that passes from fear to hop, from backwardness to modernity, fro division to unity, a Colombia that thinks in builidng a fure more than grasping at the past," The President pledged.