Uribe confirmed as Colombian president after reelection
Colombia's National Electoral Council (CNE) on Friday confirmed Alvaro Uribe as the country's president after the reelection, giving him a second four-year term beginning on Aug. 7.

The CNE said in a resolution that the results of the Colombian presidential election on May 28 were valid and Uribe was awarded the victory.

According to the final results released by the CNE, Uribe won more than 65 percent of the vote, scoring an out-right victory.

Uribe pledged, in a ceremony on Friday, to overcome all the challenges and work transparently and efficiently toward making Colombia an equitable, caring society without animosity and discrimination.

The win by Uribe was the first time in more than a century that an incumbent Colombian leader has been elected to a second term.

Under Colombia's 1991 constitution, the president is elected for a four-year term by universal adult suffrage and may not serve consecutive terms.

However, in October last year, Colombia's Constitutional Court approved a law allowing presidents to serve more than one term, a move which allowed 53-year-old Uribe to stand in the May election.

The key to Uribe's success has been a crackdown on right-wing militias and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which have used Colombia's cocaine trade to sustain an insurgency that has killed thousands of people every year.

Security was one of the pledges Uribe made to bring to the violence-torn country.

Over the past 40 years, about 200,000 lives have been lost in political violence. Uribe himself has survived several assassination attempts since taking office in 2002.