Colombia's election faces danger

A PRESIDENTIAL candidate has been assassinated, rebels have pipe-bombed a major city and a third of the country is considered unsafe for candidates - all making Colombia's 2026 election campaign one of the most violent in decades.

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INDIGENOUS leader Esneyder Gomez Salamanca, a candidate for a Peace Seat in Congress, speaks during a campaign rally in El Playon, department of Cauca, Colombia.

(AFP)

Nowhere is that danger more palpable than in Cauca, where a silver armored SUV hurries along a mountain track, watched by rifle-wielding guerrillas.

Every second spent along the route isa risk for passenger Esneyder Gomez, a 46-year-old Indigenous candidate hoping to win election to Colombia's Congress on March 8.

Neatly groomed and driven by anger about the treatment of his Nasa minority, Gomez is hunting for votes in a rebel-controlled region of Colombia's lawless southwest.

The danger is real. He has been threatened by the guerrilla for a decade. A few months ago his vehicle was shot up as he returned from a political event.

Just days ago, Indigenous legislator Aida Quilcue was kidnapped in the same area, before being released after frantic negotiations.

Gomez was accompanied as he trudged village to village along muddy roads, trying to win the votes of Indigenous communities.

The son of a Nasa Indigenous guerrilla and an Afro-Colombian police officer, his protection is a phalanx of some 30 Indigenous Guards, some barely out of their teens and armed with little more than batons.