"We have a candidate for the Presidency: Óscar Iván Zuluaga. The CD is strengthened and begins a new stage. We have the experience and knowledge of the party's values," announced the party's national director, Nubia Stella Martínez, on Twitter.
Zuluaga, 62 years old and close to Uribe, was chosen from among five pre-candidates through surveys of party militants and sympathizers.
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Senators María Fernanda Cabal and Paloma Valencia and former vice-minister and presidential pre-candidate Rafael Nieto were among the candidates.
This is the second time he has been elected presidential candidate, after he won the party's National Convention in 2014 and defeated the now deceased Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo and former Vice President Francisco Santos.
On that occasion, Zuluaga won the first presidential round but was then defeated by former president Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) in the second round, affected by a controversial case of electronic spying on Colombian politicians in which he was implicated, an investigation that the attorney general's office closed in 2017.
In addition, he was investigated for the alleged irregular financing of his campaign by the Brazilian multinational Odebrecht, after which he retired from politics for a while.