[3][4] This rivalry determined both Santos' unpopularity and his near-missed defeat during the 2014 Colombian presidential election against Uribe's protégé Óscar Iván Zuluaga.

After the Constitutional Court of Colombia determined that the re-election referendum was unconstitutional and unenforceable, Santos announced his presidential aspirations for the period 2010–2014 on behalf of the U party.

On May 30, 2010, Santos obtained 46.56% of the valid votes, so he agreed to the second round of elections, against the Colombian Green Party candidate Antanas Mockus, which took place on June 20.

[18] Santos' first foray outside of Bogotá, already inaugurated as president, was in La Mojana Sucreña, in San Jorge, a region in northern Colombia severely hit by floods.

[19] From the beginning of the government of Juan Manuel Santos, speculation began about the possible candidates for the Presidency.9 2013 was the decisive year for the definition of the candidacies for the 2014 elections.

11 In his government, the Victims and Land Restitution Law (Law 1448 of 2011) was approved, to restore, through the Unit for the Attention and Comprehensive Reparation of Victims, the lands seized by the armed actors (paramilitary and guerrilla groups ) to civilian victims of the war and recognizing the existence of the internal armed conflict in Colombia.12 Regarding the fight against Criminal Bands (BACRIM) or Organized Armed Groups (GAO), as the government has called them since March 2016 to empower the Military Forces to combat these criminal groups13 supporting the National Police; He managed to dismantle three dangerous criminal gangs, one of them with a nationwide presence: Los Rastrojos.

In February 2015, he ordered the dismantling of the GAO Clan del Golfo or self-styled Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC), led by Dairo Antonio Úsuga David, alias Otoniel, in Operation Agamemnon (reinforced and continued in the next government).

In the Solemn Operation of October 2015, Víctor Ramón Navarro Serrano 'Megateo', commander of the dissidence of the Popular Liberation Army (EPL): GAO 'Los Pelusos' dedicated to drug trafficking, was killed.14 Since November 2017, the dissident groups they are considered Residual Organized Armed Groups (GAOR), fought by the Military Forces.1516 Shortly after assuming his mandate, Juan Manuel Santos began rapprochement with the FARC-EP in order to end the most important confrontation of the Colombian internal armed conflict.

[22] On August 24, 2016, the delegations of the Government of Colombia and the FARC-EP announced that they had reached a final, comprehensive and definitive agreement,[23][24] which was signed in Cartagena de Indias on September 26, 2016,[25] but was not ratified by a narrow margin in the referendum plebiscite on October 2, 2016.

A change that was only announced on Wednesday, August 8 -one day after the inauguration of the new president Iván Duque Márquez-, through a statement from the Palestinian Diplomatic Mission in Colombia;6 a fact that caused a stir in some sectors of the public opinion, since, among other things, Foreign Minister María Ángela Holguín, when asked about the issue on August 6, 2018 (last day of her administration), in an interview with Vicky Dávila for W Radio, refused to make public the president's decision that had already been materialized by then.

When the news was released, the incoming Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, acknowledged that the new Executive had been previously informed and that, in the interests of Colombia, the decision that deprived the country of the particularity of being the only one in South America that had not recognized the Palestinian state.