Once a Hostage , She's Now Running for President of Colombia

Ingrid Betancourt, the politician and the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia hostage , at a news conference in Bogota, Colombia on Tuesday , Jan 18, 2022

Ingrid Betancourt, a former congresswoman and one time guerrilla hostage who has come to symbolize both the brutality of Colombia's long war and the Country's efforts at reconciliation, will run for president, she said Tuesday.

Betancourt enters a wide open race at a time when Colombia is at a critical political and social crossroads.

When she was kidnapped 20 years ago, Betancourt was campaigning for the same Office. Now she said, the country is facing the same corrupt system and political machinery that she had fought back then.

Today I am here to finish what I started, she said standing on a stage at a hotel in downtown Bogota, The Country's Capital flanked by allies.

Betancourt who was captured in 2002 and held by the country's largest guerrilla force, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, for more than six years, announced her bid for the May election with the country facing enormous challenges.

Following more than 50 years of war, the government and the rebel group known as FARC, signed a peace deal in 2016. But since then a swell of other armed groups have swept into the vacuum and continued to fight.

Violence has surged in parts of countryside- and critics have faulted the govt. for not investing enough to address the inequality and poverty that had helped fuel the war as it had committed to doing in the peace deal.

TODAY, there are more than 20 candidates for the presidency with most of the best known candidates grouped into three coalitions: a coalition on the left, headed by Petro; a coalition in the center, which Betancourt is joining; and a coalition on the right whose members are seen as the torchbearers for the current govt.