Colombian President pisses away poll lead

I'll freely admit, this is puerile, childish, base and beneath me, but I could not resist the headline once I had come up with it in my head.

And then again it's not every day that a world leader, up for re-election in 8 weeks' time, pees himself in public.

This is, of course, no laughing matter, if what happened is connected to the operation he had in October 2012 for prostate cancer.

Consequently, to alleviate my guilt I have made a donation to the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

You can too via their website www.pcf.org

or to Prostate Cancer UK here.

It is interesting to note how Santos chose to carry on with his speech, and none of his handlers dived on stage to cover up his potential embarrassment.  He deserves respect for his fortitude.

On a slightly loftier note, it should be noted that, indeed, President Juan Manuel Santos could be in trouble in May.

The former Mayor of Bogota, Enrique Peñalosa, managed to pull in almost 1,500,000 votes in the Green Party's open primary the weekend before last, almost three times the number achieved by the Green Party's 2010 candidate, the indomitable (and also former Bogota mayor) Antanas Mockus.

Mockus managed to poll over 20% of the vote in the first round against then Vice President Santos, though he was roundly beaten in the run-off 70/30.

Peñalosa, however, is a different kind of phenomenon to Mockus, and one that is putting President Santos under real pressure from the left catching him in a pincer movement, as former President Alvaro Uribe's newly-minted Democratic Centre Party, founded on opposition to Santos's peace process with the FARC, took over 15% of the vote in parliamentary elections last week.

A poll out on Sunday suggests that if the election had been held then, Peñalosa would defeat the incumbent in the run-off.

Under the circumstances, is it any wonder that President Santos may be a little nervous?

UPDATE: I am not sure this blog aggregator has quite managed to convey the essence of my post: