Free houses for Colombia's poor not vote buying: Santos .
Free houses for Colombia's poor not vote buying: Santos .
Thursday, 24 January 2013 08:29 Narayan Buckley
Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos on Wednesday denied accusations that the government is providing free housing to the poor as a cynical vote-buying tactic ahead of the 2014 presidential elections.
"Some of the government's critics say the president is politicking because he is delivering homes. Well I say if you don't like the soup, here's two helpings, because we are going to continue to deliver houses. We are going to continue to deliver water, we are going to continue to deliver highways and [public] works to improve the lives of Colombian people," said Santos at the inauguration of a free housing program in Cartagena.
The emphatic defense the president made for his government's housing and public works program was likely a thinly veiled response to former president Alvaro Uribe's inference on Tuesday that Santos was breaking the law.
Santos on Monday said that he and the country's minister of housing, German Vargas Lleras, would have to soon discuss the latter's political future -- whether the charismatic minister would run against Santos in 2014 or whether "they would continue building houses together."
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