According to the Political Constitution of 1991, in order to be president of Colombia, you only need to be a practicing citizen, have been born in the national territory and be over 30 years of age. Although studies are usually a requirement to aspire to the main position in the country.
Since the formation of Gran Colombia in 1819, passing through New Granada, the Granadina Confederation, the United States of Colombia and up to the current Republic of Colombia, there have been 59 presidents in total, not counting the 26 managers and those who were in office for less than four months, nor the five members of the Government Military Junta after the resignation of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla.
Among the long list of presidents of Colombia, the most common profession of the leaders is that of Law. In total there have been 36 lawyer presidents, some of them were judges and prosecutors. The first lawyer president was Estanislao Vergara, from Bogota, who assumed the Presidency between 1828 and 1830, just after the mandate of Simón Bolívar. While the most recent is the current president, Iván Duque Márquez.
But the relationship of the presidents with journalism has also been very close. In history, there have been 22 journalists in the Casa de Nariño since 1819. The first was Mariano Ospina Rodríguez, who was head of state between 1857 and 1858, although he was also a lawyer and professor.
However, if the period before Gran Colombia is also taken into account, Jorge Tadeo Lozano, who was the first director of a newspaper in 1810, was elected president in 1811.
Of the six presidents since 1991, three have been related to this profession: César Gaviria Trujillo was director of the newspaper La Tarde de Pereira. Andrés Pastrana was the founder of the Guión magazine and the Noticiero TV Hoy and Juan Manuel Santos worked for several years in the newspaper El Tiempo, which was owned by his family.
Regarding preparation for the position, Juan Carlos Rodríguez-Raga, co-director of the Democracy Observatory of the Universidad de los Andes, pointed out that what is needed to be president are votes and citizens actually have little time and resources to take into account takes into account in its decision the preparation of the candidates.
Another common profession among the presidents of Colombia is also the military career, with 20 presidents who were part of the Armed Forces.
The presidential elections advance this Sunday to choose the next president of the country between Rodolfo Hernández and Gustavo Petro. If Hernández wins, he would be the sixth engineering president in the history of Colombia, who has had representatives in different branches of this profession.
Hernández is a civil engineer from the National University. But Colombia has already had two mining engineers (Pedro Nel Ospina and Mariano Ospina Pérez) and three civil engineers (Laureano Gómez Castro, Gustavo Rojas Pinilla and Virgilio Barco Vargas).
In the case of Petro, he would be the sixth economist to arrive at the Casa de Nariño, after Alfonso López Pumarejo, Misael Pastrana Borrero, César Gaviria, Ernesto Samper and Juan Manuel Santos.
Among other professions, the country has also had four writers (Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, José Manuel Marroquín, Carlos Lleras Restrepo and Julio César Turbay Ayala), a historian (Eduardo Santos Montejo) and a doctor (Santos Acosta).