Last Thursday, presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay warned that Colombia was fast sinking back into its violent past. Two days later, a gunman shot him in the head during a rally.

The 39-year-old opposition senator now “needs a miracle”, his wife said in a social media post on Monday, urging people to pray for him as he fights for life in a Bogota hospital. At the same time, prosecutors are trying to find out who may have ordered the teenage suspect to pull the trigger.

The attempted assassination is the latest sign that events in the Andean nation are spinning out of control, a little more than a year before President Gustavo Petro must leave office. Cocaine production is at a record, organized crime gangs are capturing ever more territory, and fiscal accounts are the worst they’ve been since the pandemic. Moreover, Petro has been unable to get his main initiatives past congress and the courts.

Petro’s rambling national address late on Saturday after the attempt on Uribe’s life didn’t reassure the nation that he’s a leader who has a grip on things, according to Andres Mejia, a Bogota-based political consultant. The attack on Uribe is likely to strengthen the government’s opponents and weaken anyone trying to defend its legacy, he added.

“This elevates to the maximum the sensation of insecurity among the population,” Mejia said. “It creates fear and suspicion, which inevitably darken the general outlook for the government.”

Petro took office in 2022, pledging to overhaul the nation’s economic model by boosting labor rights and welfare benefits, and by phasing out fossil fuels. His approval rating rose in April to 37%, the highest since February 2023, according to the latest poll by Invamer. Under the constitution, he can’t seek reelection.

Polls show there are no clear front-runners in the 2026 presidential race, with the first round of voting scheduled for next May. While the attack on Uribe generates short-term uncertainty, it will also accelerate the debate on who will succeed Petro, which markets have seen as “the light at the end of the tunnel,” said Alejandro Arreaza, an economist at Barclays.

Uribe has repeatedly attacked Petro’s policy of seeking “total peace” through negotiations with illegal armed groups, which have so far failed to yield major demobilizations, and has called instead for a military crackdown.

Illegal armed groups have taken advantage of the relative lack of military pressure to expand, including into areas that used to be relatively safe, such as the agro-industrial region near Bogota, in the grasslands east of the Andes.

Market volatility

Investors were already braced for possible market volatility after Finance Minister German Avila on Friday afternoon signaled that the nation will suspend its fiscal anchor. He also called for substantial interest rate cuts.

Colombia’s peso bonds maturing in 2033 touched the lowest levels in two years early trading on Monday, before trimming losses, while the peso weakened the most among major emerging market currencies.

“The shooting of Mr. Uribe will give the impression, both domestically and internationally, that Colombia’s security situation is poor, which could lead to an outflow of funds,” said Yuta Maeda, senior-economist at SMBC Nikko Securities in Tokyo., in reply to written questions. “In addition, the increasing uncertainty surrounding next year’s presidential election could also weigh on the Colombian market.”

Cristiano Oliveira, macroeconomic director at Banco Pine, said he expected the attack to put “even more pressure on local interest rates and the country’s risk premium.”

At the peak of Colombia’s drug cartel terror in the 1980s and early 1990s, four presidential candidates were assassinated, among other prominent Colombians. Uribe’s mother, the journalist Diana Turbay, was murdered by Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel in 1991.

Whether the Uribe shooting is investigated thoroughly and transparently will matter a lot for public trust, said Will Freeman, fellow for Latin American Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

“A lot of Colombia’s story over the past 30 years was about how it put that kind of brazen, unchecked violence behind it,” Freeman said.

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(With assistance from Felipe Saturnino, Philip Sanders, Andreina Itriago and Nicolle Yapur.)

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