Bogotá.- The coffin of Senator and Colombian presidential pre-candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay, who died this Monday as a result of an attack suffered two months ago, was received tonight with a funeral march and white handkerchiefs in the Elliptical Hall of the National Capitol where he will be watched until next Wednesday.
Covered with the flag of Colombia and carried by National Police officers, the coffin entered the Capitol through Plaza Núñez, which connects with the Casa de Nariño, presidential headquarters, and behind it were his wife, María Claudia Tarazona; his father, Miguel Uribe Londoño; his sister María Claudia Hoyos Turbay and other relatives.
Once inside, the coffin was installed in front of the presidency tribune of the Congress, flanked by soldiers from the Presidential Guard Battalion, and the national anthem of Colombia was played to begin the lying-in-state.
“With deep sorrow and sadness we say goodbye today to a great friend, a great colleague,” said the first vice president of the Senate, Ana Paula Agudelo, who made “an energetic call for progress in the investigations and for justice to be done in the face of this assassination that has moved the country.”
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For his part, the president of the House of Representatives, Julián David López, pointed out that Colombia “will not yield an inch to violence” so that events like the one that cost the life of Uribe Turbay, 39 years old and senator of the right-wing Democratic Center party, are not repeated.
Former Presidents and Diplomats Pay Honors
A sentence spoken by a Catholic priest gave way to a minute of silence with a bugle call as part of the military honors.
Among those attending the Capitol tonight to pay tribute to the memory of the politician, praised for “his dedication to public service and his commitment to the country”, were former presidents César Gaviria (1990-1994) and Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018), accompanied by his wife María Clemencia Rodríguez and Esteban, one of their sons.
Also in attendance were congressmen from different political parties, the mayor of Bogotá, Carlos Fernando Galán; the head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Colombia, John T. McNamara, and the independent presidential pre-candidate Juan Daniel Oviedo, among others.
The only members of the national government present at the ceremony were the Minister of the Interior, Armando Benedetti, and the director of the Administrative Department of the Presidency of the Republic (Dapre), Angie Rodríguez, who arrived when the honors ceremony had already begun.
According to local media, before Benedetti and Rodríguez entered the building, the widow and her children, apparently displeased with their presence, left the Elíptico Hall.
«He was a wonderful man who dreamed of peace and the union of Colombia, of a country where no child would repeat the history that his son is repeating today. Breaking up a family is the most horrible act of violence that can ever be committed,» Tarazona declared to the press before the arrival of the coffin.
Miguel Uribe will be mourned for three days in the Capitol
Uribe Turbay was seriously injured with two shots to the head and one more in the left leg on June 7th, when he was speaking to a group of supporters in a park in the Bogotá neighborhood of Modelia.
For 64 days he remained in critical condition at the Santa Fe de Bogotá Foundation where he died at 01:56 local time (06:56 GMT) this Monday.
The coffin will remain in a burning chamber in the Capitol until noon on Wednesday, when it will be moved to the Primate Cathedral of Colombia for the funeral.
In that same Elliptical Hall, tributes were paid to his grandfather, former President Julio César Turbay (1978-1982), who died on September 13, 2005, at the age of 89, and more recently to his grandmother, Nydia Quintero, who died on June 30 of this year at 93.
