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Former Colombian president Lopez Michelson dies at 94 |
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10:24, July 12, 2007 |
Alfonso Lopez Michelson, former president of Colombia from 1974 to 1978, died of a heart disease on Wednesday at the age of 94, his family told the media.
As a distinguished politician and intellectual, his last days were spent in crafting a mooted humanitarian exchange between Colombian rebels and government forces and seeking an end to the nation's armed conflict.
Lopez was a forerunner of the Liberal Revolutionary Movement, which opposed the National Front in the 1950s. The Front and the Movement formed a system of government that set two traditional parties against each other and alternately taking the presidency for years.
"It hurts me to know that he will not see the humanitarian exchange for which he fought in his last year," said another former Colombian President Ernesto Samper, who was also Lopez's close friend.
"Until he died, Lopez was a protagonist in the nation's political history. Every conversation with him was a lesson," Samper added.
Lopez also wrote the novel "The Chosen" (Los Eligidos), a harsh criticism of Colombia's political class.
He gained a law degree in the Bogota private university El Rosario and a master's degree at the U.S. university of Georgetown; and until 1952 he worked as an academic in Colombia's National University and another higher education institution La Liber and Rosario.
He wrote columns in Bogota newspaper El Tiempo and in El Heraldo, a newspaper published in the northern city of Barranquilla.
"Until the end he continued his work. His articles in the daily were essential to him," said Alvaro Escallon, who was ambassador to China during Lopez's presidency.
He said that "It is a great loss for Colombia. He was one of our most important figures. He was a great leader and political compass."
Source: Xinhua
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