COLOMBIA: Presidential Minister

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Richard Coeur de Lion, who spent the greater part of his life as far as possible from his admiring subjects (in Palestine and on the continent), was for a time the most popular, eventually one of the most unpopular, of all medieval kings of England. Last week Dr. Enrique Olaya Hererra, who as Minister to Washington has been absent from his native land for seven years, was elected President of Colombia. After only two weeks of strenuous campaigning he polled nearly twice as large a popular vote as either of his two conservative opponents, Dr. Guillermo Valencia, General Alfredo Vásquez Cobo, familiar figures to the mass of Colombian voters. Immediately after the election issues on the Bogota Stock Exchange moved up an average of two points.

"I am a statesman," said Dr. Olaya last week, "not a politician. A politician thinks of the next election, a statesman thinks of the next generation."

Statesman Olaya created a minor flurry among Washington hostesses by announcing that he would return to Washington to complete his work at the Colombian legation before his inauguration in August, thus becoming the first chief executive-elect to serve in a diplomatic position in the U. S.