Visual offence

To me personally, the worst visual offence being committed in the election campaign is the sheer ugliness of the posters, murals and billboards. I have shown you some, before. Most pictures are just boring, heavily manipulated photos of candidates. You would't recognise them if you met them, because on the posters they are all 10 years younger, completely without wrinkles, as vivid as plastic dolls.

But it is not so easy for art directors to be creative in this jungle of rules, where you may not offend, certain combinations of colours are prohibited, and so on. The hand at the top of this note has been banned by the electoral council, as it uses the colours of the Colombian flag.

Very rarely some politician has the courage to be less conventional, as is the case with Gustavo Petro. Not a wild thing, but the Warhol aesthetics is definitely a break:

Even so, it is only when we leave the party propaganda that we can expect to see something more original. As this bloody mural fragment from Bogotá, commenting on the main party of the government coalition:

During the MTV awards late 2009 appeared another intelligent comment on Uribe's foreign policy. It caused aggressive official comments by the government, protests, boycott of the Puerto Rican band scheduled to play in Colombia, etc. The careful observer will see that the t-shirt does not say that Uribe is paramilitary ... but just that he is 'para' (for) military bases. Which he is.

I would like to have one of those — but I would not dare to wear it in Colombia.