Uribista Candidate's Campaign Tried to Sabotage Colombia Peace Talks

Colombia's presidential race is heating up, with scandals rocking the campaigns of both leading candidates. After an advisor for President Juan Manuel Santos stepped down earlier this week in response to bribery allegations, the campaign manager for his rival Oscar Ivan Zuluaga has resigned as well. 

Yesterday's resignation of Luis Alfonso Hoyos, Zuluaga's campaign chief, is related to the recent arrest of a hacker accused of illegally gathering information on the peace talks between FARC rebels and the government in Havana. While the individual had also been contracted by the Zuluaga camp to provide information security and social networking services, the Uribista candidate insisted that he had no knowledge of the spying efforts. 

But these claims were contradicted when the head of Colombian news agency RCN revealed that Hoyos and the hacker approached him last month, offering to provide dirt on the peace process. As El Espectador reports, the men claimed to have evidence that the FARC were intimidating citizens into voting for Santos. According to Semana magazine, Hoyos tried to misrepresent the hacker, introducing him as an intelligence expert for the government.

RCN turned them down. Reuters notes that the broadcaster deemed that "the information did not have the quality or precision that it needed to be published."

This is not the first instance of apparent sabotage of the peace talks by the Colombian right. Last year, for instance, Alvaro Uribe himself leaked an army memo showing the coordinates where military operations had been temporarily suspended in order to guarantee the safe passage of guerrilla leaders leaving Colombia to join the negotiating table in Cuba.

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